Calculation and Experimental Validation of Induced Currents on Coupled Wires in an Arbitrary Shaped Cavity

An efficient numerical technique is presented for the calculation of induced electric currents on coupled wires and multiconductor bundles placed in an arbitrary shaped cavity and excited by an external incident plane wave. The method is based upon the finite-difference time-domain (FD-TD) formulation. The concept of equivalent radius is used to replace wire bundles with single wires in the FD-TD model. Then, the radius of the equivalent wire is accounted by a modified FD-TD time-stepping expression (based on a Faraday’s law contour-path formulation) for the looping magnetic fields adjacent to the wire. FD-TD computed fields at a virtual surface fully enclosing the equivalent wire are then obtained, permitting calculation of the currents on the wires of the original bundle using a standard electric field integral equation (EFIE). Substantial analytical and experimental validations are reported for both time-harmonic and broad-band excitations of wires in free space and in a high-Q metal cavity.