A new 3-D FDTD model of magnetized cold plasma for modeling electromagnetic wave propagation in the earth-ionosphere waveguide

A new three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) numerical model is developed to simulate electromagnetic wave propagation in an anisotropic magnetized cold plasma medium. Plasma effects contributed by electrons, positive, and negative ions are considered in this model. The current density vectors are collocated at the positions of the electric field vectors, and the complete FDTD algorithm consists of three regular updating equations for the magnetic field intensity components, as well as 12 tightly coupled differential equations for updating the electric field components and current densities. This model has the capability to simulate wave behavior in cold plasma for an applied magnetic field with arbitrary direction and magnitude. The FDTD algorithm is validated by calculating the Faraday rotation of a linearly polarized plane wave, which demonstrates very good agreement with the analytical results.