Analysis of electromagnetic environments in indoor offices using parallel FDTD method

We present a time domain hybrid method to realize the fast coupling analysis of transmission lines excited by space electromagnetic fields, in which parallel finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, interpolation scheme, and Agrawal model-based transmission line (TL) equations are organically integrated together. Specifically, the Agrawal model is employed to establish the TL equations to describe the coupling effects of space electromagnetic fields on transmission lines. Then, the excitation fields functioning as distribution sources in TL equations are calculated by the parallel FDTD method through using the message passing interface (MPI) library scheme and interpolation scheme. Finally, the TL equations are discretized by the central difference scheme of FDTD and assigned to multiple processors to obtain the transient responses on the terminal loads of these lines. The significant feature of the presented method is embodied in its parallel and synchronous calculations of the space electromagnetic fields and transient responses on the lines. Numerical simulations of ambient wave acting on multi-conductor transmission lines (MTLs), which are located on the PEC ground and in the shielded cavity respectively, are implemented to verify the accuracy and efficiency of the presented method.

In this paper, we summrize the new development of hardware-acceleration techniques and a parallel conformal Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method in computational electromagnetics engineering. We investigate the performance of a parallel conformal FDTD method on different hardware platforms, such as Intel and AMD processors, with vector-arithmetic logic unit (VALU) acceleration, a regular PC cluster, a high-performance server cluster, the use of a graphics-processing unit (GPU), and an IBM CELL processor. The FDTD method, which is parallel in nature, is one of the best candidate numerical methods for using multiple-core processors and computer clusters to efficiently simulate various electromagnetic problems. Several representative examples, such as a UWB (ultra-wideband) antenna array and reflector antennas, are employed to demonstrate the engineering applications of the parallel conformal FDTD method.

A novel hybrid method combining 3D Parallel Finite- Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method with Windowing technique through a new Controlling factor to study the Shielding Effectiveness (SE) of metallic cavities with apertures is firstly presented in this paper. The simulating time when the sampling electric field in cavity converges can be reduced greatly by the MPI-based Parallel FDTD method with the optimum virtual topology for the scattering problem. And then the sampling electric field in cavity is dealt with Windowing technique,which can further reduce the total time steps that Parallel FDTD method needs. The numerical results show that combination of Parallel FDTD with Windowing technique can enhance the simulating efficiency greatly. Finally,the SE of metallic cavities with different configurations is studied by the hybrid method and some useful conclusions to the practical electromagnetic shielding problems are obtained.

Various methods are available at the disposal for computing the solution of electromagnetic problems expeditiously. Electromagnetic scattering problems can be classified into two broader categories named as surface and volume problems. These problems can be solved using differential and integral equations. Differential equations based techniques use Finite Element Method (FEM) and Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) methods and major integral formulation based technique is Method of Moment (MOM). Any set of linear equations for a given system can be solved using direct or iterative methods. Direct solvers confront many computational complexities and use large amount of memory while iterative solvers reduce computational complexities and use less amount of memory. In this research work some integral equations based solver schemes such ass Finite Element Method (FEM), Finite Difference Time Domain Method (FDTD) and Method of Moments (MOM) for surface and volume scatters are discussed and results are compared. The comparison is with respect to complexity and memory requirements for different solution schemes.

New version of FDTD with GFM program in Schwarzschild space–time

The finite difference time domain (FDTD) method has been proposed and used for sound field simulation. To reproduce actual sound wave propagation in sound field simulations, it is necessary to apply the radiation characteristics. With the FDTD method, radiation characteristics can be applied by setting sound pressure in a dense grid arrangement. However, conventional techniques for capturing radiation characteristics use a sparse array of microphones and are considered insufficient for the FDTD simulation. Furthermore, the technique required to apply captured acoustic signals in a dense grid arrangement with the FDTD method has not been considered. In this paper, we propose a novel hardware and software system that captures the radiation characteristics for a dense grid arrangement and applies them to the FDTD method, while controlling the sound wave propagation with the non-propagation region. The proposed system produces the average differences from measured values of sound pressure, propagation time, center frequency, and log-spectral distortion of 1.8 dB, 0.04 ms, 700 Hz, and 3.5 dB, respectively, which is more accurate than the conventional techniques. The result shows that this system is useful for improving the accuracy of sound wave propagation reproduction with the sound field simulation.

R wave is short for Rayleigh wave. R wave,on which the effect of gravity is generally inevitable,has received considerably extensive attention and been widely used in many fields,such as geological exploration,nondestructive test,etc. The effects of gravity on R wave velocity for elastic parameters were further analyzed based on available R wave velocity function,and the applicable range of the approximate one was given as well. Wave propagation through quasi-half-space isotropic linear elastic medium with gravity,under the excitation of differentiated Gaussian pulse( DGP) was studied by finite difference time domain( FDTD) method with staggered grid discretization,and extended boundary conditions were introduced.Velocity values obtained were closer to the theoretical ones. Meanwhile,the influence of gravity on time domain,frequency domain response was discussed. By analyzing the theoretical and numerical results,it is necessary to take the effect of gravity into account in simulation for more accurate prediction.

We have applied the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method with the supersymmetric quantum mechanics (SUSY-QM) procedure to determine excited energies of one dimensional quantum systems. The theoretical basis of FDTD, SUSY-QM, a numerical algorithm and an illustrative example for a particle in a one dimensional square-well potential were given in this paper. It was shown that the numerical results were in excellent agreement with theoretical results. Numerical errors produced by the SUSY-QM procedure was due to errors in estimations of superpotentials and supersymmetric partner potentials.

A finite difference time domain (FDTD) method in combination with the perfectly matched layer (PML) is used for dispersive media. The FDTD method is derived using the convolution relationship between the current density J and the electric field E. The high accuracy of the FDTD method is confirmed by computing the reflection and transmission coefficients for a one dimensional nonmagnetized plasma slab.

The numerical dispersion is one of the main factors to affect the accuracy of the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. It can be easy to be taken for granted that a smaller time step leads to smaller simulation errors. This paper reveals that smaller time steps do not always make more accurate results in FDTD simulations. We analytically investigated how time steps affect the numerical dispersion of two FDTD methods: the leapfrog FDTD(2,2) method and the FDTD(2,4) method. The investigations in this paper show that in the FDTD(2,2) method, a larger time step limited by the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) condition is more helpful to reduce the numerical dispersion error. However, in the FDTD(2,4) method, as the time step grows, the numerical dispersion error decreases at the beginning and then increases. Several numerical examples are carried out to verify our analysis.

This paper presents an efficient hybrid method consisting of finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, transmission line (TL) equations, and a novel time-domain S -parameter cascade (TD-SC) technique, which can be directly applied in time domain for the EMI analysis of transmission line network (TLN) in shielded electronic device excited by ambient electromagnetic wave. The FDTD method combined with an auto mesh generator is utilized to model the shielded structure of an arbitrary electronic device rapidly, and obtain the excitation fields of the TLN exactly. Then, the TD-SC technique based on TL equations, FDTD method, and S parameter of circuits is proposed for the further EMI analysis of the TLN consisting of multistage TLs and circuits. It has the advantage of without modeling the fine structures of TLs and circuits directly. Numerous examinations exhibit that this hybrid method is an efficient method for the EMI analysis of TLN by comparing with a three-dimensional FDTD method. The computation time and memory cost by this hybrid method is much less than that of the FDTD method, because the hybrid method provides a fast way to compute the transient responses on TLN in which the TLs and circuits do not need to be meshed.

The finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method as realized in the Yee algorithm is very useful for solving the analytically intractable diffraction problems that arise in the design of diffractive optical elements (DOE). The error, e, of the Yee algorithm is rather large. We introduce a new high accuracy version of the Yee algorithm based on nonstandard finite differences. We have verified its performance by comparing with known analytical solutions. We have used this algorithm to study the near field (0 - 10 wavelengths) diffraction patterns of three binary phase gratings. Grating (1) has a constant period, while grating (2) has a variable one. Grating (3) is generated by interlacing grating (1) with (2). The period of grating (1) is on the order of a wavelength. Some of these computed fields display interesting and possibly useful Fourier spectra.

The finite difference time domain method and finite element methods have proven to be highly effective techniques for the full wave analysis of microwave circuits and resonators. The finite difference time domain (FDTD) method is highly efficient, explicit and parallelizable. Finite element methods have been used in the frequency domain and in the time domain using implicit methods. Implicit methods require a solution of a linear system of equations at each time step. For the finite element time domain (FETD) algorithm to be competitive with the FDTD, the number of time iterations required for a simulation must be significantly less. An unconditionally stable FETD algorithm is used. The variational formulation is based on the vector wave equation. Unconditional stability is achieved by using a modified Newmark-Beta time integration technique. In addition, this algorithm is implemented on parallel message passing computers using a finite element tearing and interconnecting scheme. Some numerical examples based on cavity resonator problems are presented to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the method and the parallel efficiency of the algorithm.

Ground penetrating radar (GPR), as a kind of fast, effective, and nondestructive tool, has been widely applied to nondestructive testing of road quality. The finite-difference time-domain method (FDTD) is the common numerical method studying the GPR wave propagation law in layered structure. However, the numerical accuracy and computational efficiency are not high because of the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) stability condition. In order to improve the accuracy and efficiency of FDTD simulation model, a parallel conformal FDTD algorithm based on graphics processor unit (GPU) acceleration technology and surface conformal technique was developed. The numerical simulation results showed that CUDA-implemented conformal FDTD method could greatly reduce computational time and the pseudo-waves generated by the ladder approximation. And the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method are higher than the traditional FDTD method in simulating GPR wave propagation in two-dimensional (2D) complex underground structures.

The characteristics of the typical microstrip discontinuities, such as right-angle bends, T junctions and steps in width, are investigated based on the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method in a wide-frequency range. The compensation methods of the microstrip discontinuities are also discussed and compensated discontinuities can improve the circuit performance as well as the bandwidth compared with the uncompensated. The electric field varying with signal traveling in the spatial and time domain at the microstrip discontinuities are also presented.