Source excitation methods for the finite-difference time-domain modeling of circuits and devices

Two different types of source excitation for finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations, i.e., electric and magnetic field types, are investigat ed in this work for configurations that have no ground planes. This paper s hows that the electric field excitation introduces errors in the computed a dmittance of the device due to the frequency dependence of the gap admittan ce, while the magnetic field excitation does not suffer from this drawback; consequently, the latter is better suited for circuit simulations. (C) 199 9 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.