PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY OF MULTI-MODE SURFACE WAVE EXCITATION, PROPAGATION AND DIFFRACTION. I. PLANE STRUCTURES

The purpose of this paper was to study the electromagnetic field that arises when a magnetic line dipole source is located above a plane structure that supports several surface waves if the surface of the structure is characterized by a generalized impedance boundary condition. This condition is introduced here for the first time. An exact solution is given for plane structures supporting one, two and three surface waves. The magnitudes of the surface waves and simple formulas for the radiated far field patterns are given. It is shown how the methods employed in the paper can be extended to the case of plane structures that support any number of surface waves.