Through a laminated plate model a recursive formulation for the method of reverberation-ray matrix (MRRM) is proposed for the analysis of free wave propagation in an elastic plate with material properties varying along the thickness direction In contrast to the traditional MRRM the present new formulation behaves well for high frequency computation, while the heavy computational cost of storage and memory can also be cut down Numerical examples are given to analyze dispersion characteristics of waves in FGM plates and the comparison among traditional MRRM and the recursive formulation demonstrates the significant efficiency of the proposed recursive formula (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved