Finite-difference analysis of dispersive transmission lines within a circuit simulator

In this paper, a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) analysis of the transmission line equations for a general circuit simulator is presented. A two-port circuit representation is derived for integrating a dispersive transmission line network within a circuit/system simulator. The circuit model consists of resistive elements and dependent current sources, which are updated at every time step by the FDTD algorithm. The frequency dependence of the conductors' parameters is taken care of by a recursive integration that employs the Vector Fitting algorithm. The application of this model is presented for several examples, such as nonuniform transmission lines, plane wave excitation of the line, and determination of overvoltages induced by a nearby lightning stroke.