A Hybrid DGTD-MNA Scheme for Analyzing Complex Electromagnetic Systems

Abstract

A hybrid electromagnetics (EM)-circuit simulator for analyzing complex systems consisting of EM devices loaded with nonlinear multi-port lumped circuits is described. The proposed scheme splits the computational domain into two subsystems: EM and circuit subsystems, where field interactions are modeled using Maxwell and Kirchhoff equations, respectively. Maxwell equations are discretized using a discontinuous Galerkin time domain (DGTD) scheme while Kirchhoff equations are discretized using a modified nodal analysis (MNA)-based scheme. The coupling between the EM and circuit subsystems is realized at the lumped ports, where related EM fields and circuit voltages and currents are allowed to “interact’’ via numerical flux. To account for nonlinear lumped circuit elements, the standard Newton-Raphson method is applied at every time step. Additionally, a local time-stepping scheme is developed to improve the efficiency of the hybrid solver. Numerical examples consisting of EM systems loaded with single and multiport linear/nonlinear circuit networks are presented to demonstrate the accuracy, efficiency, and applicability of the proposed solver.