IMPROVING THE RELIABILITY OF FREQUENCY DOMAIN SIMULATORS IN THE PRESENCE OF HOMOGENEOUS METAMATERIALS - A PRELIMINARY NUMERICAL ASSESSMENT

The accuracy of the finite difference frequency domain (FDFD) method in the solution of canonical waveguide discontinuity problems involving complementary or nearly complementary metamaterials (MTMs) is analytically discussed. It is shown that the good accuracy of the method (in comparison with other frequency-domain techniques) is due to the intrinsic approximation which it introduces in the finite-difference discretization of sharp dielectric interfaces. By exploiting such a result, a perturbation algorithm is proposed for the reliable modeling of MTMs devices when other frequency domain numerical methods are at disposal. A preliminary numerical analysis is carried out to assess the reliability and accuracy of the proposed modeling approach when canonical scattering problems are at hand.