Marcus Clemens

Electromagnetic Waves - Mathematical Modelling and Numerical Simulation

Electromagnetic wave propagation phenomena can be described as solutions of the full set of Maxwell equations. Analytical models cover the description of electromagnetic waves for simple problem settings such as e.g. electromagnetic waves originating from Hertzian dipoles, the propagation of harmonic plane waves or guided waves in simple geometries. For this task contemporary numerical simulation schemes can be shown to be more flexible since they reliably allow to consider realistic three-dimensional geometries. The most prominent explicit finite-difference time domain (FDTD) leapfrog scheme originally proposed by Yee is presented in terms of the discrete electromagnetic field theory based on the ideas of the Finite Integration Technique of Weiland. The success of this scheme is related to numerous extensions of this method and its numerical efficiency even for large scale discrete models. Its possibilities in the simulation of realistic electro- magnetic wave propagation problems and also its limits e.g. for electrically large structures are addressed and possible in-use alternative numerical techniques for the simulation of electromagnetic wave phenomena are presented.

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