Finite difference time domain low cost modeling for automotive environments

This paper describes the modeling and analysis of a vehicle's electromagnetic environment by means of computer simulation based on the full wave finite difference time domain (FDTD) numerical method. The procedure described is a method to characterize the effects of emissions produced by external and "internal" EMI sources and allows reducing the amount of measurements and vehicle tests in prototypes during the design phase. The course of action presented is considered to be "low cost" in a wide sense because it can be applied to almost any FDTD code, including free distribution ones, without any modifications of the code itself and not requiring specialized computers to obtain sensible results with reasonable computation times.