DOING PHYSICS WITH MATLAB

 

[1D] FDTD electromagnetic wave simulations of propagating waves in non-magnetic and lossy dielectric media

Ian Cooper

Please email any corrections, comments, suggestions or additions

 matlabvisualphysics@gmail.com

 

View  ELECTROMAGNETISM USING THE FDTD METHOD

 

Matlab Download Directory

 

ft_03.m

Download and run the script ft_03 .m. Carefully inspect the script to see how the FDTD method is implemented.  Many variables can be changed throughout the script, for example, type of excitation signal, boundary conditions, time scales, properties of the medium.

 

We can also model the propagation of EM waves in materials where the loss term is specified by the conductivity of the material. This loss term results in the attenuation of the propagating energy.

 

A wave encountering a boundary between media with different refractive indices (relative permittivities) will in general be partially refracted (transmitted) and partially reflected at the boundary. The relationship between the incident wave and the refracted and reflected waves can be expressed in terms of the transmission T and reflection R coefficients. This relationship can be expressed in terms of impedances Z or refractive indices n.

 

For a non-magnetic and non-lossy dielectric medium, the speed of propagation c of an electromagnetic wave depends on the refraction index n of the medium. The refractive index n is a function of the relative permittivity   , hence

             

 

For an electromagnetic wave the impedance Z is defined as the ratio between the magnitudes of the E and H fields. For a medium with dielectric constant   the impedance Z varies as  

 

        

 

       

 

         

 

The impedance of free space is   

 

 For our [1D] model of the incident wave reaching the boundary, we must have

 

      

 

and

      

 

In the case of non-magnetic material  , so

       

 

      

 

 

 

The amplitude for the electric field propagating in the +Z direction in a lossy dielectric medium is given by

         

 

The two parameters and are given by

        

 

    

      

 

Simulations

Parameters:

Nt = 1000     Nz = 300   lambda = 3x108/(400x106)      (f = 400 MHz)

eR1 = 1   S = 0   S2 = 0.01  zS = 150

 

Fig. 1.   Animation of sinusoidal EM wave striking a lossy dielectric medium

 

Fig. 2.   Probes measurements of electric field.

Fig. 3.  Figure Window summary of results. There is reasonable agreement between the theoretical predictions and the values calculated from the exponential decay of the EM wave in the lossy dielectric medium.