Electromagnetic plane wave scattering by a system of two parallel conducting prolate spheroids

By means of modal series expansions of electromagnetic fields in terms of prolate spheroidal vector wave functions, an exact solution is obtained for the scattering by two perfectly conducting prolate spheroids in parallel configuration, the excitation being a monochromatic plane electromagnetic wave of arbitrary polarization and angle of incidence. Using the spheroidal translational addition theorems recently presented by Sinha and MacPhie (1980) which are necessary for the two-body (or multibody) scattering solution, an efficient computational algorithm of the translational coefficients is given in terms of spherical translational coefficients. The field solution gives the column vector of the series coefficients of the scattered field in terms of the column vector of the series coefficients of the incident field by means of a matrix transformation in which the system matrix depends only on the scatterer ensemble. This eliminates the need for repeatedly solving a new set of simultaneous equations in order to obtain the scattered field for a new direction of incidence. Numerical results in the form of curves for the bistatic and monostatic radar cross sections are given for a variety of prolate spheroid pairs having resonant or near resonant lengths.