An efficient frequency-independent numerical method for computing the far-field pattern induced by polygonal obstacles

Abstract: For problems of time-harmonic scattering by rational polygonal obstacles, embedding formulae express the far-field pattern induced by any incident plane wave in terms of the far-field patterns for a relatively small (frequency-independent) set of canonical incident angles. Although these remarkable formulae are exact in theory, here we demonstrate that: (i) they are highly sensitive to numerical errors in practice, and (ii) direct calculation of the coefficients in these formulae may be impossible for particular sets of canonical incident angles, even in exact arithmetic. Only by overcoming these practical issues can embedding formulae provide a highly efficient approach to computing the far-field pattern induced by a large number of incident angles. Here we address challenges (i) and (ii), supporting our theory with numerical experiments. Challenge (i) is solved using techniques from computational complex analysis: we reformulate the embedding formula as a complex contour integral and prove that this is much less sensitive to numerical errors. In practice, this contour integral can be efficiently evaluated by residue calculus. Challenge (ii) is addressed using techniques from numerical linear algebra: we oversample, considering more canonical incident angles than are necessary, thus expanding the set of valid coefficient vectors. The coefficient vector can then be selected using either a least squares approach or column subset selection.