INTERPOLATION OF SHAPED REFLECTOR SURFACES BY CUBIC PSEUDOSPLINES

A recent study demonstrated the superior stability of quintic pseudosplines, when compared with usual oscillatory series expansions, for global interpolation of numerically defined reflector surfaces presenting critical behavior of their principal curvatures. Although interpolating functions with continuous derivatives up to second order are necessary for ray-optical field evaluations, C-class surface descriptions are sufficient when the antenna secondary field is calculated by integration of physical-optics-induced currents. In this connection, the applicability of cubic pseudosplines is explored via numerical comparison with previously obtained results from the implementation of the quintic ones. (C) 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.