Modeling of waveguide structures using DG-FETD method with higher order tetrahedral elements

Abstract

In this paper, the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite-element time-domain (FETD) method is developed to model electromagnetic (EM) structures with waveguide excitations. Several specific issues about the DG-FETD modeling are addressed. First, the higher order tetrahedral elements are employed to accurately model the geometry of EM structures and effectively reduce the dispersion error so that the efficiency of the FETD method is increased. To further increase the efficiency of the DG-FETD method, the local time-stepping scheme is applied. Secondly, the conformal perfect matching layer (PML) is applied to terminate the waveguide. The formulation of the conformal PML is presented in this paper. Thirdly, a novel approach is proposed to extract the S-parameters of waveguide structures. This approach applies the surface magnetic current to excite the EM fields in the waveguide structures. Taking advantage of the relationship between the excitation current and excited fields in the uniform waveguide, one can readily obtain the incident electric fields that are required for calculating the S-parameters. This approach avoids the pre-simulation of the uniform waveguide. Finally, the numerical results are given to validate the DG-FETD modeling. © 1963-2012 IEEE.