Stability and accuracy analysis of an extension of the FDTD method to incorporate magnetized ferrites

This paper studies the stability and numerical dispersion of an extension of the original finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method to incorporate magnetized ferrites. This extension is based on discretizing the ferrite equations by means of central differences and averages. Both partially magnetized and saturated ferrites are considered. With the aim of studying the numerical features of the resulting FDTD algorithms, we have considered the propagation of plane-waves along longitudinally magnetized ferrite materials. This is a simple 1D problem that enables the numerical properties of the algorithms to be studied analytically. A von Neumann stability analysis shows that the stability condition of the original FDTD method is preserved and that the algorithms do not exhibit numerical dissipation. The accuracy of the numerical results is not deteriorated with respect to those obtained in the demagnetized case. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.