<<Up     Contents

Knife-edge effect

Knife-edge effect: In electromagnetic wave propagation, a redirection by diffraction of a portion of the incident radiation that strikes a well-defined obstacle such as a mountain range or the edge of a building.

Note: The knife-edge effect is explained by Huygens' principle, which states that a well-defined obstruction to an electromagnetic wave acts as a secondary source, and creates a new wavefront[?]. This new wavefront propagates into the geometric shadow area of the obstacle.

Source: from Federal Standard 1037C in support of MIL-STD-188

wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump