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Radar Cross Section (RCS) is the equivalent effective area of a given target intercepting a radar wave. In other words, RCS is a measure of how detectable a solid is with radar. For the past years, several electromagnetic numerical codes were used to calculate the RCS of aircrafts including the well known and commonly used Finite Element Method (FEM), Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) and Method of Moments (MoM). An incident planar wave is used to simulate the radar signal. Today a hybrid method known as Finite Element Boundary Integral (FEBI) solves a RCS model using the advantages of both FEM and MoM. This paper shows a series of RCS benchmarks listed in the literature comparing the results and performance of FEM, IE and FEBI. In order to show the state of the art of electromagnetic numerical codes and a more realistic analysis, several RCS of aircraft models are presented using FEBI and a true radar source.

Automotive radar and Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) technology are currently being developed focusing in the safety of the drivers and passengers. The U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NTHSA) announced that it is going to create a formal path forward for vehicle-to-vehicle communication for light vehicles meaning that NTHSA will start regulatory proposals on how this technology could become mandatory in the future. Automotive short-range radar (SRR) uses the electromagnetic field distribution around a vehicle including reflection from other objects to detect obstacles. If the vehicle is moving the radars can warn the driver to possible impacts and even automatically trigger safety devices such as seat belts or air bags. One of the biggest challenges on the design of SRR is the high frequency of operation which makes it difficult the use numerical simulation due to the small wavelength, leading to electrical large models.

EMI (Electromagnetic Interference) is one of the major concerns today in the automotive industry. The main reason is that vehicles are using and depending more on electronic technology. The causes of electromagnetic interference problems are not only related to the ever-increasing number of embedded electronics systems in vehicles, but also to external electronic devices that are brought in to automobiles by drivers and passengers (e.g. cell phone, MP3 players, Bluetooth devices, portable video games). Even though these problems can cause serious issues on safety systems like the airbag, their symptoms are often noticed in a less harm way in the sound system. A very common EMI problem in automotive sound systems is a particular noise caused by devices that uses GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) technology. Most of the cell phones and vehicle locators rely on GSM technology.

The finite element method (FEM) can be used as an analysis tool in automotive electromagnetic engineering and recently new technologies such as Domain Decomposition Method (DDM) were employed to simulate very large field structures such as a whole vehicle. A FEM solver offers numerous advantages over other numerical methods, such as method of moments (MoM) and finite difference time domain (FDTD), because it has the ability to handle complex heterogeneous and anisotropic materials which is often used inside vehicles, also providing a very precise representation of complex geometries via high order tetrahedral elements. Nevertheless, for large field problems such as the scenario of the ISO 11451-2 where an antenna radiates a vehicle in an anechoic chamber, FEM solvers requires an interface between an infinite domain to a finite domain through the use of radiating boundary conditions on artificial truncation surfaces. This causes the solver to model a great quantity of air regio.