Discretizing the Currents

Discretizing the object or solution space is commonly referred to as meshing. It is a necessary step to solve the integral equations.

Similar to the procedure followed to solve the charge distribution on the straight wire, the surface of the PEC body is discretized into triangles. Therefore the currents on the triangles are approximated as follows (similar to Equation 3):

(1)

J_{s c a t} = \sum_{n = 1}^{N} a_{n} g_{n}

The equation for the discretized currents can then be substituted into the EFIE (Equation 1) to yield:

(2)

\sum_{n = 1}^{N} a_{n} ℒ {g_{n}}_{\tan} = - E_{i n c, \tan}

In Equation 2, the current coefficients represented by $a_{n}$ are the only unknown quantity.

Before proceeding to the next step, it is necessary to take a closer look at basis functions.