FDTD handset antenna modelling at 1800 MHz for electrical performance and SAR results

The Finite Difference Time Domain Technique (FDTD) has been favoured for numerical bioelectromagnetic analysis by a number of researchers because of the relative ease of modelling complex dielectric bodies. Antenna performance and specific absorption rate (SAR) results are presented at 1800 MHz for a half wavelength dipole, a monopole and a planar inverted F antenna in free space and in the presence of different head phantoms. The phantoms used were a homogeneous sphere, a layered sphere and a realistic head model all using a 2.5 mm cubic voxel grid. The trend in the SAR results confirms the observation of others that the simpler head phantoms tend to overestimate the maximum SAR in comparison to more realistic models.