Improved Numerical Methods for the Simulation of Microwave Circuits

The scattering matrix describes monolithic microwave integrated circuits that are connected to transmission lines in terms of their wave modes. Using a finite-volume method the corresponding boundary value problem of Maxwell's equations can be solved by means of a two-step procedure. An eigenvalue problem for non-symmetric matrices yields the wave modes. The eigenfunctions determine the boundary values at the ports of the transmission lines for the calculation of the fields in the three dimensional structure. The electromagnetic fields and the scattering matrix elements are achieved by the solution of large-scale systems of linear equations with indefinite symmetric matrices. Improved numerical solutions for the time and memory consuming problems are treated in this paper. The numerical effort could be reduced considerably