Accurate characterization of planar printed antennas using finite-difference time-domain method

The finite-difference-time-domain method (FD-TD) is used to characterize complex planar printed antennas with various feed structures, which include coaxial probe feed, microstrip line feed, and aperture coupled feed structures. A coaxial probe model is developed by using a three-dimensional FD-TD technique. This model is shown to be an efficient and accurate tool for modeling coaxial line fed structures. A novel use of a dispersive absorbing boundary condition is presented for a printed antenna with a high dielectric constant. All the numerical results obtained by the FD-TD method are compared with experimental results, and the comparison shows excellent agreement over a wide frequency band