Two of the primary areas for the application of the FDTD algorithm since its inception have been in the study of electromagnetic scattering and the calculation of surface currents. In addition to Yee's original paper, other early applications of the FDTD method to scattering problems were by Taylor et al. [284], Merewether and co-workers [6,11], Taflove and co-workers [3,7,135,285], Holland [4], and Kunz et al. [49,50]. In 1989, Harfoush et al. [286] used the FDTD method to analyze scattering from moving surfaces. Also in 1989, Britt [138] was among the first FDTD researchers to use a pulse excitation in conjunction with a near-field to far-field transformation to compute the radar cross section for both 2-D and 3-D perfectly conducting and non-perfectly conducting scatterers. In 1990, Furse et al. [137] suggested additional improvements to the FDTD method for calculating the radar cross section of perfectly conducting objects. Recently, Luebbers and Penney [287] extended the FDTD method to allow for scattering from apertures in infinite ground planes.
While the above research used the standard staircasing FDTD, several researchers in the 1990's have developed and applied conformal FDTD methods to analyze scattering problems. Some of this research includes the work by Fusco [72,73], Lee [288], Holland et al. [289], Jurgens et al. [81,82], and Yee et al. [80,83].