Advanced Progress in the Numerical Analysis of Car Antenna Systems

In this paper a new hybrid method for the numerical simulation of antennas placed on large objects with respect to the wavelength (especially on cars) is presented. The fields in the vicinity of the actual radiating element are calculated by the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method, which allows an easy treatment of different dielectric and metallic materials. To simulate the open boundary the PML (perfect matched layers [1]) method is used. Applying Love's equivalence principle [2] the calculated fields on the surface of the FDTD calculation region can be used as excitation sources in the remaining unbound volume. In this region the Method of Moments (MoM) is applied, so it is not necessary to divide the complete space into small elements. The presented examples show the validity of this numerically efficient approach.