Solving for TOTAL FIELD
According to my experience:
1) Total-field can be used always
2) Setting up excitation is fairly easy (PORT or SCATTERING Boundary conditions, or others)
3) Deviation of the wave-front
4) More meshing elements needed
1) No matter how many layers you have in your model, and how many materials, solving for total field is relatively simple.
2) Excitation is introduced on the boundary, somewhere in the geometry. If you are using inhomogeneous environment, excitation should be introduced inside the geometry if you are using PMLs, although it is possible to propagate incident field first through PML, though not recommended. (Once I got fairly similar results with excitation propagating first through PML, and when used assemblies.) Thus using ASSEMBLIES is necessary.
3) Total field also is solving propagation of your excitation through defined geometry, and that accumulates errors. For instance, it has been reported about deviation of the wave-front of plane wave when propagating through homogeneous environment
4) Computational resources have to be used for calculating propagation of incident field (less meshing elements for the scatterer and parts of the geometries of particular interests or high field gradients)
I will show recipe how to use successfully total field later on few examples.
1) Total-field can be used always
2) Setting up excitation is fairly easy (PORT or SCATTERING Boundary conditions, or others)
3) Deviation of the wave-front
4) More meshing elements needed
1) No matter how many layers you have in your model, and how many materials, solving for total field is relatively simple.
2) Excitation is introduced on the boundary, somewhere in the geometry. If you are using inhomogeneous environment, excitation should be introduced inside the geometry if you are using PMLs, although it is possible to propagate incident field first through PML, though not recommended. (Once I got fairly similar results with excitation propagating first through PML, and when used assemblies.) Thus using ASSEMBLIES is necessary.
3) Total field also is solving propagation of your excitation through defined geometry, and that accumulates errors. For instance, it has been reported about deviation of the wave-front of plane wave when propagating through homogeneous environment
4) Computational resources have to be used for calculating propagation of incident field (less meshing elements for the scatterer and parts of the geometries of particular interests or high field gradients)
I will show recipe how to use successfully total field later on few examples.