Teaching of advanced wave-propagation phenomena in open-space problems and waveguide devices using MATLAB GUIs

Interactive graphics and animations are fundamental tools for teaching electromagnetic concepts, especially to explain propagation phenomena. For this reason, the study of these phenomena needs advanced analysis tools. This article presents an accurate and efficient hybrid mode-matching method for the analysis of arbitrarily shaped structures with H-plane obstacles and discontinuities. An open-space spectral method is used to model the electric behavior of the H-plane problem. Next, the open-space modes are matched to guided modes, in order to obtain a multimode scattering-matrix representation of the structure. This new method is used to analyze the propagation in passive complex radio-frequency structures. The results from the analysis are integrated into a MATLAB graphical user interface (GUI), which has been designed to improve the teaching/learning process at the Universidad Politecnica of Valencia in Spain. These GUIs are thoroughly explained in the paper, and the improvements in the teaching/learning process are also discussed.