A Novel Dual-Field Time-Domain Finite-Element Domain-Decomposition Method for Computational Electromagnetics

A novel dual-field time-domain finite-element domain-decomposition method is presented for numerical simulation of electromagnetic phenomena. The method divides the computation domain into several non-overlapping subdomains and computes both the electric and magnetic fields in each subdomain by solving second-order vector wave equations. A leapfrog-like scheme is employed in the time marching to update the alternating electric and magnetic fields. Adjacent subdomains are related to each other by the equivalent surface currents on the subdomain interfaces, which are also updated in a similar fashion. The method requires minimum communications between the subdomains, thus, is highly suitable for parallel computations. The proposed domain decomposition method is particularly attractive for the numerical simulation of finite arrays and large-scale electromagnetic problems. Numerical stability and dispersion error analyses are conducted and several radiation examples are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the method.