The finite difference time domain (FDTD) method has been developed in tandem with the progress of computer technology since K. S. Yee applied it to the analysis of an electromagnetic problem in 1966. The FDTD method is widely recognized as a powerful computational tool for analyzing electromagnetic problems involving complex geometries, such as antennas, microwave and optical waveguides and interaction between antennas and the human body. The commercial electromagnetic simulators based on the FDTD are also being developed very actively because users are able to trace temporal electromagnetic behaviors and to easily obtain a practical level of accuracy. However, the user must understand the principle of the method in order to use the simulator efficiently. In this paper, the basic concept and the principle of the FDTD method are reviewed for beginners, including graduate course students, rather than specialists in this discipline. Several recent topics concerning electromagnetic and antenna problems are also introduced.

The theory of the method of moments (MoM), which has been widely used as a numerical technique for analyzing the characteristics of antennas and scatterers, is described. First, the steps of MoM to solve integral equations for conducting wires and planes are presented. It is pointed out that MoM combined with Galerkin's method yields highly accurate results. The importance of ensuring the continuity condition of current on conducting bodies is emphasized and numerical examples for a conducting structure involving junctions of wire segments and planar segments are presented. Finally, MoM for dielectric scatterers including recent developments is described.

This letter presents a reduction technique of penetrated electromagnetic fields through a narrow slot in a planar conducting screen. When a plane wave is excited to the narrow slot, the aperture electric field is controlled by the two parallel wires connected on the slot. The magnitude of penetrated electromagnetic fields through a narrow slot is controlled by electric field distributions on the slot aperture. The results show that the magnitude of the penetrated electromagnetic field can be effectively reduced by installing the two parallel wires on the slot.

Electromagnetic noise radiated from microwave ovens may cause serious interference problems in wireless systems using the 2.4-GHz band. Since oven noise waveforms show strong dependence on the frequency selectivity of the receiver filters, the effect of band limitation on the interfering oven noise is an important issue for evaluating or comparing the performance degradation of wireless systems subject to interference. To understand these effects, theoretical and experimental investigations of the waveform, peak amplitude, and pulse width of band-limited oven noise are carried out. It is found that the peak amplitude of the received noise changes with the bandwidth in a way very similar to the case of a simple RF tone-burst input. The pulse width of the received noise also changes with the receiver bandwidth but takes a minimum value at a certain receiver bandwidth, which is an essential feature of band-limited microwave oven noise. In addition, an appropriate resolution bandwidth is determined for using a spectrum analyzer to obtain accurate oven noise parameters.

Unloaded Q of a dielectric image resonator is discussed based on the electromagnetic field distribution. It is shown that a partial air gap and a dielectric sheet with low permittivity between the dielectric resonator and the shield case reduce both the dielectric loss and the conductor loss. Especially, reduction of the conductor loss is significant, since the magnetic field distribution moves from the conductor to the upper part of resonator. A half-cut image resonator with an air gap and dielectric spacer is simulated and measured. The unloaded Q of the dielectric resonator with low dielectric loss is improved by about two times from that of original image resonator.

The use of metal-coated plastics is increasing as shielding materials of electronic and information products due to their lightweight. In this paper, a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) algorithm, based on the derivation of a time-domain representation of the surface impedance of an equivalent resistive film, was developed to analyze the electromagnetic penetration of pulsed electromagnetic fields through metal-coated plastics. The validity of the proposed algorithm, in both the far-field and near-field cases, was verified by comparing the calculated penetrated electromagnetic fields or shielding effectiveness with theoretical and measured ones. Good agreement between them demonstrated the usefulness of the FDTD algorithm.

This paper presents a new type of optical probe designed to detect magnetic near-fields with high accuracy in the gigahertz range. Its probe head consists of a loop antenna element doubly loaded with LiNbO3 electro-optic crystals. Through an optical technique, it can work as a conventional double-loaded loop probe without metallic cables or an electrical hybrid junction. We examined probe characteristics for magnetic field detection up to 20 GHz. We confirmed that the probe can measure magnetic fields near a microstrip line in the gigahertz range and can suppress influence of electric fields.

We describe elements of a fast integral equation solver for large periodic and partly periodic finite array systems. A key element of the algorithm is utilization (in a rigorous way) of a block-Toeplitz structure of the impedance matrix in conjunction with either conventional Method of Moments (MoM), Fast Multipole Method (FMM), or Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)-based Adaptive Integral Method (AIM) compression techniques. We refer to the resulting algorithms as the (block-)Toeplitz-MoM, (block-)Toeplitz-AIM, or (block-)Toeplitz-FMM algorithms. While the computational complexity of the Toeplitz-AIM and Toeplitz-FMM algorithms is comparable to that of their non-Toeplitz counterparts, they offer a very significant (about two orders of magnitude for problems of the order of five million unknowns) storage reduction. In particular, our comparisons demonstrate, that the Toeplitz-AIM algorithm offers significant advantages in problems of practical interest involving arrays with complex antenna elements. This result follows from the more favorable scaling of the Toeplitz-AIM algorithm for arrays characterized by large number of unknowns in a single array element and applicability of the AIM algorithm to problems requiring strongly sub-wavelength resolution.

Common-mode (CM) current on a feed cable attached to printed circuit board (PCB), which is one of main source of undesired electromagnetic radiation problem, is investigated by experimental and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) modeling. In this paper, frequency responses of CM current on PCB and feed cable are modeled and analyzed as an electromagnetic interference (EMI) antenna, which depends on the configuration of PCB with a wire cable. Several different configurations are prepared to demonstrate the effect of PCB dimension on resonance frequencies of CM current. In the results, EMI antenna in the frequency band around the first resonance frequency was comprised of the ground plane and cable. In order to explain the frequency response of CM current, two EMI antenna models are proposed and demonstrated. EMI antenna is comprised of the ground plane and cable, and the other EMI antenna is comprised of the trace on the ground plane. It is suggested that the result is one of basic consideration for the ground plane with cable that have high EMI problem and resonance frequency of CM current.

The effect of the structure with difference on cross-section for the enlarged models that simulates signal transmission line (STL) in the magnetic head of HDD is discussed. The experimental results suggested that strip and shield structure are effective for suppression of EMI.

A high-attenuation waveguide filter using electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) substrates is introduced. With a simple design modification on the EBG covers, the waveguide filter produced an almost full Ku-band rejection bandwidth showing better than 20 dB input-to-output isolation from 12.3 to 17.2 GHz.

This paper presents an imaging technique using the MUSIC algorithm to localize cylindrical reflectors in cross-borehole radar arrangements. Tomographic measurement, in which a transmitting and a receiving antenna are individually moved in separate boreholes, can be considered as a combination of a transmitting and a receiving array. A decorrelation technique with the transmitting array, which has been proposed for imaging point reflectors, is applied for imaging cylindrical reflectors using the MUSIC algorithm. Simulated and experimental results are shown to verify the validity of this algorithm for cylindrical targets. We analyze the evaluation error caused by the increase in the radius of the cylinder.

The electromagnetic scattering of a plane wave by an inhomogeneous plane whose surface impedance changes locally on the plane is treated. A boundary-value problem is formulated to describe the scattering phenomenon, in which the boundary condition depends on the surface impedance of the plane. Application of the Fourier transform derives an integral equation, which is approximately solved by the method of least-squares. From the solution of the equation, the scattered field is obtained by the inverse Fourier transform. By the use of the incomplete Lipschitz-Hankel integral for the computation of the field, numerical examples are given and the scattering phenomenon is discussed.

In this paper, we present a numerical analysis for resonant characteristics of the TM010 mode of a cylindrical cavity containing a dielectric rod and a conductive layer on its metal walls. This analysis uses the mode matching method for calculation. Error in complex permittivity of a loaded dielectric rod measured using a layered cavity is evaluated as a function of thickness and layered conductor conductivity. A thick layered cavity is necessary for precise measurement of material properties using the cavity resonator method at microwave and millimeter-wave frequencies.

In this paper, we calculated resonant frequency and unloaded Q-factor for the TM0i0 resonant mode excited in a cylindrical cavity composed of walls with finite conductivity and with a dielectric rod loaded coaxially along the central axis. Formulation for the calculation is made using the mode-matching method. Convergence of the calculation is checked. Values calculated by the present method for various combinations of dimensions, permittivity, and conductivity of the inner-components of cavity are compared with those calculated by a conventional method formulated using loss-less electromagnetic fields of cavity. Although the difference between the values calculated by those two methods is usually small, it is found that the difference increases as permittivity of dielectric rod increases and becomes about 10-6 in reciprocal of unloaded Q-factor of the loaded cavity in a presented case.

In this paper a second order Volterra series model of an operational amplifier (opamp) circuit is presented. Such a model is suitable to the investigation of the rectification and demodulation effects of radio frequency (RF) interference superimposed on the nominal input signals and on the power supply voltage of an opamp. On the basis of the new model, some design criteria to improve the immunity of opamps to RF interference are proposed. Model predictions are verified by comparison with experimental test results.

Making up an electromagnetic wave simulator based on the FEM is tried, which may run on some widely used platforms by use of Java and a single commercial tool. Since the codes and configuration files to be created for this simulator are common, one can construct the simulator running on the platforms at the same time. Using this simulator, the transmission properties of two- and three-dimensional waveguide discontinuities in optical and microwave waveguides are analyzed, the inverse problem in material constant measurement is solved, and the computed results are presented including plots of the electric field distribution.

Electromagnetic shielding clothes for reducing human exposure to radio waves have been commercialized. However, their effect has so far been confirmed only in the form of the raw material. In this paper, we develop a new compact scheme for measuring electromagnetic radiations using a short dipole antenna and Gaussian pulses in order to evaluate the effect of the shielding clothes over a wide frequency range with the aid of time-domain measurements and FDTD computation. The proposed method is based on a time-domain analysis technique and pulse compression technique, which enables the user to separate the direct transmission wave from the reflection from the floor as well as from the refracted wave around the neck of the clothes. The direct advantage is that measurements can be made in an ordinary laboratory without the function of an electromagnetic anechoic chamber. Also, we can separate direct transmission wave and diffraction wave from the measurement result by using pulse compression technique, then each frequency characteristic of the shielding shirt can be evaluated. The performance of the separation is confirmed by comparing the measurements with those of a shirt with no opening. We further demonstrate the possibility of predicting the effective conductivity of the material as a function of frequency by comparing the measured results with realistic FDTD computations, which will enable us to design a shielding shirt via numerical means.

The transient phenomenon of electromagnetic waves caused by a time dependent resistive screen in a waveguide is treated. A boundary-value problem is formulated to describe the phenomena, in which the resistivity of the screen varies from one steady state to another in dependence on time. Application of Fourier analysis derives an integral equation, which is approximately solved by the method of least-squares. From the solution of the equation, the transient field is obtained by the inverse Fourier transform. By the use of the incomplete Lipschitz-Hankel integral for the computation of the field, numerical examples showing typical transient phenomenon are attached.

The boundary element method (BEM), a representative method of numerical calculation of electromagnetic wave scattering, has been used for solving boundary integral equations. Using BEM, however, we finally have to solve a linear system of L equations expressed by dense coefficient matrix. The floating-point operation is O(L2) due to a matrix-vector product in iterative process. Greengard-Rokhlin's fast multipole algorithm (GRFMA) can reduce the operation to O(L). In this paper, we describe GRFMA and its floating-point operation theoretically. Moreover, we apply the fast Fourier transform to the calculation processes of GRFMA. In numerical examples, we show the experimental results for the computation time, the amount of used memory and the relative error of matrix-vector product expedited by GRFMA. We also discuss the convergence and the relative error of solution obtained by the BEM with GRFMA.