FDTD Characterization of Antenna-channel Interactions via Macromodeling

Modeling of radio wave propagation is indispensable for the design and analysis of wireless communication systems. The use of the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method for wireless channel modeling has gained significant popularity due its ability to extract wideband responses from a single simulation. FDTD-based techniques, despite providing accurate channel characterizations, have often employed point sources in their studies, mainly due to the large amounts of resources required for modeling fine geometrical details or features inherent in antennas into a discrete spatial domain. The underlying influences of the antenna on wave propagation have thus been disregarded. This work presents a possible approach for the efficient space-time analysis of antennas by deducing FDTD-compatible macromodels that completely encapsulate the electromagnetic behaviour of antennas and then incorporating them into a standard FDTD formulation for modeling their interactions with a general environment.MAS