A fast time-domain finite element-boundary integral method for electromagnetic analysis

A time-domain, finite element-boundary integral (FE-BI) method is presented for analyzing electromagnetic (EM) scattering from two-dimensional (2-D) inhomogeneous objects. The scheme's finite-element component expands transverse fields in terms of a pair of orthogonal vector basis functions and is coupled to its boundary integral component in such a way that the resultant finite element mass matrix is diagonal, and more importantly, the method delivers solutions that are free of spurious modes. The boundary integrals are computed using the multilevel plane-wave time-domain algorithm to enable the simulation of large-scale scattering phenomena. Numerical results demonstrate the capabilities and accuracy of the proposed hybrid scheme.