Spectral analysis of high-frequency diffraction of an arbitrary incident field by a half plane—Comparison with four asymptotic techniques

The knowledge of high-frequency diffraction of an arbitrary wave incident on an edge is important in many applications, such as antennas mounted on aircraft and reflector antennas illuminated by complex feeds. In this paper the problem of a half plane illuminated by a nonplanar wave is investigated using the concept of the plane wave spectral representation. For large wave number k, a new higher-order asymptotic solution for the total field up to and including terms of order k^-5/2 relative to the incident field is derived. The behavior of the solution for the observation points which coincide with shadow boundary directions of a multipole line source is discussed in detail. Furthermore, numerical solution of the field integral representation is constructed for the observation angles in the transition regions. The results are compared with those of the Geometrical Theory of Diffraction (GTD), the Uniform Asymptotic Theory (UAT), the Uniform Theory of Diffraction (UTD) and the Modified Slope Diffraction (MSD).