Remcom's Electromagnetic Simulation Tools & Numerical Methods

Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method (FDTD)

While many electromagnetic simulation techniques are applied in the frequency-domain, FDTD solves Maxwell’s equations in the time domain. This means that the calculation of the electromagnetic field values progresses at discrete steps in time. One benefit of the time domain approach is that it gives broadband output from a single execution of the program; however, the main reason for using the FDTD approach is the excellent scaling performance of the method as the problem size grows. As the number of unknowns increases, the FDTD approach quickly outpaces other methods in efficiency.

Ray-Tracing Methods

Ray-tracing methods use discrete rays to represent advancing wavefronts as they propagate from a transmitter through a scene. Rays interact with geometry in the scene through reflections, diffractions, and transmissions. The two dominant ray-tracing methods are Shooting-and-Bouncing Rays and Image Theory. Remcom’s software combines these two methods to leverage the advantages of each.

• Ray-Tracing with Geometric Optics and UTD
• Ray-Tracing with Physical Optics and MEC

XFdtd’s Electrostatic Solver

Remcom’s static solver module is a second-order solver which works with the same geometry and grid used for time-domain computations and is compatible with the time-domain solver. In addition to fully static problems, the solver may be used to compute initial conditions for a time-domain simulation, such as those involving time-varying switches or nonlinear electric or magnetic materials.