Electromagnetic Compatibility Analysis of Multilayer PCBs Using a Hybrid Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) - Partial Element Equivalent Circuit (PEEC) Method

A hybrid FDTD/PEEC method is used to analyse radiation from multilayer PCBs. A Huygen's surface is obtained from the PEEC method that can be used as an excitation for a traditional FDTD simulation from which radiation patterns, and hence EMC/EMI performance, can be obtained. The use of the Huygen's excitation will remove the necessity to place 3 or 4 FDTD cells across the thin PCB tracks resulting in much reduced simulation times. Comparisons between pure FDTD and the hybrid method are shown for the simple case of a 50Ω microstrip line and good agreement is obtained for current distributions and radiation patterns. A pure FDTD simulation of a complex, multilayer PCB used in a 2.5Gb/s optical transceiver is carried out and initial results are presented.