Electrostatic simulation methodology for capacitive touch-screen panels

This paper reviews several issues affecting the numerical simulation of capacitive touch screen sensors. The Finite Element Method formulation is adopted, via the commercial solver COMSOL, and used to solve the underlying electrostatic problem. Touch screen panel layouts are briefly described and the main performance metrics identified. The main computational issue identified is the tension between the need for both accuracy and speed. As panels usually comprise a finite array of repeating unit cells a compromise is to only model a smaller array of such cells. A series of numerical experiments are described documenting the effect of changing the number of unit cells retained in the simulation.