FDTD analysis of phased array antennas

This work presents a new application of the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method to the generalized analysis of phased array antennas. The generality of the FDTD method brings important advantages to the phased array antenna analysis problem, allowing the modeling of complex conductor and dielectric geometries with relative ease. Additionally, a new broad-band FDTD periodic boundary condition is developed which allows the array problem to be simplified to a periodic unit cell computational domain. This hybrid frequency/time-domain periodic boundary condition enables solution of the periodic phased array problem for arbitrary scan conditions in a broadband fashion. The new method is applied to waveguide and stacked microstrip antenna arrays and the numerical results are compared to experimental or analytic solutions, demonstrating the validity and utility of this method.