An Accurate Three-Dimensional FDTD(2,4) Method on Face-Centered Cubic Grids With Low Numerical Dispersion

In this letter, a three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method that is second-order in time and fourth-order in space on a face-centered cubic (FCC) grid, termed as FCC-FDTD(2,4), is proposed to solve the time-domain Maxwell's equations. The proposed method shows a much lower numerical dispersion error compared with the errors of other FDTD schemes, such as the FCC-FDTD(2,2) method, the FDTD(2,2) method, and the FDTD(2,4) method. This improvement in the numerical dispersion results from the FCC grid and the fourth-order scheme in space used in the proposed FCC-FDTD(2,4) method. Then, the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy condition is given through spectral analysis, and an analytical numerical dispersion relation is obtained and comprehensively studied through numerical results with the FCC-FDTD(2,2) method, the FDTD(2,2) method, and the FDTD(2,4) method. Compared with the other three FDTD methods, the proposed method has much smaller numerical dispersion errors. Finally, the accuracy of the proposed method is further validated with other numerical examples.