A novel approximate equivalent edge currents (EECs) are proposed for use in the modified edge representation (MER) for flat plates. It was reported that PO-EECs with classical PO diffraction coefficients, as applied to MER, perfectly recover PO surface integration. The inclusion of classical FW-EECs as it is, however, would not enhance the accuracy since the reality of the fringe wave is lost in the edge modification. This paper presents simple approximation for inclusion of FW-EECs in MER; FW-EECs are weighted by the function of the angle between the modified edge and the real edge. The key feature of this approach is that uniform fields are predicted everywhere though only classical diffraction coefficients are used. MER also simplifies the ray-tracing in the secondary diffraction analysis. Numerical results for diffraction from flat plates demonstrate the potential of these EECs.

The effects of finite ground plane upon the patterns of the GPS patch antennas are analyzed by EEC with modified edge representation (MER). The comparison with UTD and measurements shows that low elevation patterns including axial ratios are successfully predicted.