Efficient excitation of microstrip lines by a virtual transmission line in FDTD

A novel technique to excite microstrip lines with the finite-difference time-domain method (FDTD) is introduced. The model uses a one-dimensional virtual transmission line in the calculation of the incident and reflected voltages. The proposed model allows to extract the scattering parameters with a single three-dimensional FDTD run with a shorter simulation time than many of the well-known excitation models. Simulation results and comparisons with other models are provided to verify the proposed approach.