An efficient and accurate method to solve low frequency and non-conformal problems using finite difference time domain (FDTD)

Abstract

In this article we present νFDTD (New FDTD), an efficient and accurate method for solving low frequency problems and with those non-conformal geometries by using the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method. The conventional time domain technique FDTD demands extensive computational resources when solving low frequency problems, or when dealing with dispersive media. The νFDTD technique is a new general-purpose field solver, which is designed to tackle the above mentioned issues using some novel approaches, which deviate significantly from the legacy methods that only rely on minor modifications of the FDTD update algorithm. The νFDTD solver is a hybridized version of the conformal FDTD (CFDTD), and a novel frequency domain technique called the Dipole Moment (DM) approach. This blend of time domain and frequency domain techniques empowers the solver with potential to solve problems that involve: (i) calculating low frequency response accurately and numerically efficiently; (ii) handling non-Cartesian geometries such as curved surfaces accurately without staircasing; (iii) handling thin structures, with or without finite losses; and (iv) dealing with multi-scale eometries.