Series in Microelectronics

edited by Wolfgang Fichtner
Qiuting Huang
Heinz Jäckel
Hans Melchior
George S. Moschytz
Gerhard Tröster

Vol. 160

This work studies the numerical properties of the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) algorithm for the solution of Maxwell’s equations. The focus lies on the analysis of the dispersion properties, in particular for nonuniform mesh spacing, and of the reflection and transmission at planar material boundaries. Furthermore, novel methods are proposed to compensate the numerical errors in nonuniform meshes and at boundaries. The proposed methods are implemented on several applications from optics and dosimetry. Among these are the full wave analysis of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser and an extensive study on anatomical and experimental head models for the compliance testing of mobile telecommunications equipment.

Andreas Christ was born in Offenbach, Germany, in 1968. He received the Dipl.-Ing. Degree in Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt in 1996. In 1997, he joined the Bioelectromagnetics group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich as a graduate research assistant. In 1999, he continued his work at the Foundation for Research on Information Technologies in Society (IT’IS) and the Integrated Systems Laboratory at ETH. The focus of his work lay on the analysis and optimization of the numerical properties of the FDTD algorithm and on its application in numerical dosimetry and the compliance testing of wireless devices.

Keywords: Numerische Simulation elektromagnetischer Felder, finite Differenzen im Zeitbereich, VCSE-Laser, numerische Dosimetrie