A hybrid FDTD/SEM model for physics-oriented analysis of time-domain radiation properties of antenna-based sensors

A semi-analytical methodology is presented for the accurate analysis of time-domain radiation characteristics of antenna sensors. A locally conformal finite-difference time-domain technique is adopted to derive a minimal pole/residue spherical harmonic expansion of the equivalent currents excited on a suitable Huygens surface enclosing the sensing device. In this way, by using the singularity expansion method, the time-domain gain and effective height of the structure can be evaluated analytically, in terms of the newly introduced incomplete spherical Bessel functions, as the superposition of non-uniform spherical wave contributions attenuating along with the time and space according to the complex poles accounting for the natural resonant processes occurring in the device. The accuracy of the developed technique is assessed by application to an ultrawideband bow-tie antenna-based sensor for millimeter-wave radar measurements. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.