Multi-resolution adaptive solution refinement technique for a method of moments-based electromagnetic simulator

Abstract

A method for operating a computer to determine the electrical characteristics of a passive planar structure. The method starts by defining a first mesh on the structure. The first mesh divides the structure into polygons. A surface current is defined in the structure as a first weighted sum of a first set of basis functions. The weights of the first basis functions in the first weighted sum are calculated by solving Maxwell's equations. The mesh is then refined by dividing each polygon into a plurality of sub-polygons. The surface current in the sub-polygons is defined as a second weighted sum of a second set of basis functions. The second set of basis functions includes the first set of basis functions and a plurality of extension basis functions representing the additional degrees of freedom introduced by the refined mesh. The extension basis functions preferably include a capacitative set of basis functions representing the capacitative contribution of the sub-polygons and an inductive set of basis functions representing the inductive contributions of the sub-polygons. The contribution of each basis function in the capacitative and inductive sets of basis functions is estimated prior to solving Maxwell's equations in the refined level. Redundancy is eliminated by removing those capacitive basis functions whose contributions are less than a capacitative threshold value and those inductive basis functions whose contributions are less than an inductive threshold value.