392

IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013

A General Method for Modeling Packaged Diode

Spanning Multiple Cells in FDTD
Jingjing Tang, Junping Geng, Member, IEEE, Xianling Liang, Member, IEEE, and Ronghong Jin, Member, IEEE

AbstractIn this letter, we propose a general method based

on the modified nodal approach (MNA) to incorporate packaged
diodes into finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method with
diodes spanning multiple FDTD cells. The approach to fill the
extended nodal matrix can be applied to analyze circuits with
different topologies. The validity of this method is demonstrated
by connecting a packaged diode, MA4E1317, at the end of a microstrip transmission line, which spans three and nine FDTD cells,
respectively. Results are in good agreement with those obtained
by the commercial circuit simulation package ADS.
Index TermsModified nodal approach (MNA), multiple-cell
finite-difference time domain (FDTD), packaged diode model.

I. INTRODUCTION

Fig. 1. Lumped element connected with three FDTD cells.

HE FINITE-DIFFERENCE time-domain (FDTD)

method has been extended to incorporate lumped
elements with the aim to simulate complex electronic systems [1], [2]. Several works have focused on modeling
the diode in an FDTD simulator: [3] and [4] approximate
the voltagecurrent ( ) relationship of the diode as a
second-order Taylor expansion; [5] embeds the diode into an
FDTD scheme by solving a quadratic equation. The two aforementioned approaches can update the electric field equation
explicitly to improve simulation efficiency. Unfortunately, the
previous methods offer few advantages to analyze a packaged
diode directly. The parasitic parameters introduced by a diode
package would enhance the order of circuit and make it tedious
to obtain the explicit updating form. In [6], the lumped-network
(LN)-FDTD method is extended to treat a packaged Schottky
diode as a two-terminal device. According to this method,
relationship is represented with a Y-matrix in the Laplace
domain, which is difficult to obtain especially for high-order
circuits as well.
Moreover, [3][6] embed the diode into only one single
FDTD cell. However, at higher frequencies, the diode may span
multiple FDTD cells when it needs finer Yee meshes. Applying

Manuscript received January 11, 2013; accepted January 22, 2013. Date of
publication March 26, 2013; date of current version April 02, 2013. This work
was supported by 973 (2009CB320403), the Natural Science Foundation of
Shanghai under Grant 10ZR1416600, the Doctoral Fund of Ministry of Education of China under Grant 20090073120033, the National Science and Technology Major Project of the Ministry of Science under Grant 2011ZX03001007-03, and the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry.
The authors are with the Department of Electronics Engineering, Shanghai
Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China (e-mail: hbydtjj@gmail.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2013.2253303

the one-cell FDTD method with modeling other occupied cells

as perfect electric conductor (PEC) would result in numerical inductance and thus sacrifice the simulation accuracy.
Reference [7] extends the one-celled resistive voltage source
LE-FDTD model to span multiple cells by solving a system of
linear equations, while [8] proposes a method without solving
matrix equations through describing the relationship in an
explicit form that is difficult to achieve for complicated circuit
topology.
In this letter, we extend the method proposed in [7] to a general one to analyze a packaged diode model with complicated
circuit topology and strong nonlinearity. The modified nodal
approach (MNA) [9] is introduced to include the electric fields
of multiple FDTD cells where circuit elements span. A general
principle of filling the nodal matrix is proposed, which can be
conveniently applied to analyze circuits with different topologies. The proposed method is verified through the simulation of
a packaged Schottky barrier diode (MA4E1317) spanning three
and nine FDTD cells. The simulation results are compared to
ADS, and good agreement is obtained.
II. THEORY OF FIELD AND CIRCUIT
According to the LE-FDTD method, the current density term
of Amperes law consists of
, conduction current density due to lossy medium, and
, the current density of the
lumped network. Assuming the lumped network spans FDTD
cells in -direction in a Cartesian coordinate system as shown
in Fig. 1, with index in -direction ranging from
to
, the
Maxwells curl equation can be written as

1536-1225/$31.00 2013 IEEE

(1)

TANG et al.: GENERAL METHOD FOR MODELING PACKAGED DIODE SPANNING MULTIPLE CELLS IN FDTD

The left-hand side of (1) is denoted as a current density

The discretized form of (1) is

393

which can be transformed into time domain with the form

(8)
The discretized form of (8) is

(2)
where

(9)
According to the principle of time average and central difference, and
at time-step
can be estimated from
the corresponding values at time-step and
, described as
(10)

(3)
(11)
can be 1 to determine the polarity of the lumped network
referred to the
component as shown in Fig. 1.
The current density generated by the lumped network has the
expression
(4)
Meanwhile, the voltage of the lumped network can be modeled as a line integral of electric fields
(5)

By submitting (10) and (11) into (9), one can obtain

(12)
which describes how circuit and field components impact each
other in a general form.
The extended state variable vector
can then be updated
by solving (12) according to matrix method when (12) is linear
and using the NewtonRaphson iteration when (12) is nonlinear.
Then, one can update the
component of the specific FDTD
cells where the device spans using the last entries in . Field
components on other FDTD cells that are not related to the device can be updated with standard FDTD equations.

The next step is to incorporate (2)(5) into modified nodal

analysis matrix in Laplace domain with a general form as shown
in (6) at the bottom of the page.
is a nodal voltage vector where the first element is
,
and is a branch current vector with
in the last place. is
the order of the lumped circuit. The total number of elements in
and is
.
can be obtained based on
the proposed principle according to [9], and some entries in
and could be nonlinear.
records electric field components of the multiple FDTD cells where the lumped network
is embedded.
is obtained from (3).
Equation (6) can be rewritten as

A Schottky barrier diode (MA4E1317) with equivalent circuit as shown in Fig. 2 is analyzed in this letter. The circuit includes four voltage-independent elements
and
two nonlinear voltage-dependent elements
, while ,
, and
are not considered in the equivalent circuit of diode
in [5]. In [10], the relationships of
and
branches are
derived respectively according to

(7)

(14)

III. EXAMPLE AND DISCUSSION

(13)

(6)
..
.

..

394

IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013

TABLE I
ELEMENT VALUE OF THE EQUIVALENT CIRCUIT OF DIODE MA4E1317

Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit of MA4E1317 [10].

Fig. 3. MA4E1317 is connected at the end of microstrip line.

where
(15)
(16)

(17)
and the measured -parameters are used to specify the value of
each element, as listed in Table I.
The method proposed in [5] can achieve simulation efficiency
by deducing the explicit form of the relationship at the devices port. However, when it is applied to analyze MA4E1317
with an equivalent circuit shown in Fig. 2, the explicit form is
complicated.
To verify the proposed method in this letter, the microstrip circuit in Fig. 3 is simulated with a self-written MATLAB FDTD
field solver based on Section II. The diode is along -direction, connecting the ground and microstrip. The Yee cell size
is 0.4 mm in -direction and 0.55 mm in -direction. The thickness of the microstrip substrate is 0.795 mm. We have studied
two meshing schemes according to the number of cells the substrate is discretized into in -direction. One is three cells with
ps, and the other is nine cells with
ps
based on CFL stability criterion. The excitation is a resistive
sinusoidal voltage source whose amplitude is 20 V, operation
frequency is 5.8 GHz, and source resistance is 50 .

Fig. 4. Voltage across the diode. (a) Case (9, 1). (b) Cases (9, 3) and (3, 1).
(c) Cases (9, 9) and (3, 3).

TANG et al.: GENERAL METHOD FOR MODELING PACKAGED DIODE SPANNING MULTIPLE CELLS IN FDTD

395

For case (3, 3), 38 203 time-steps are simulated, and voltage
across the diode is shown in Fig. 5. It suggests that this method
can achieve stability.
IV. CONCLUSION
This letter extends the MNA to embed the electric fields of
multiple FDTD cells where circuit elements span. A general
method to fill the nodal matrix is derived so that it can be conveniently applied to analyze arbitrary two-terminal devices with
complicated equivalent circuits. The proposed method is verified through a packaged Schottky barrier diode computation,
and the result is in good agreement with the one obtained from
the commercial software ADS.
REFERENCES
Fig. 5. Voltage across the diode of case (3, 3).

We use
to denote the simulation case that the microstrip substrate is discretized into cells and the diode spans
cells with the other
cells treated as PEC. Five cases
are analyzed, including (3, 1), (3, 3), (9, 1), (9, 3), and (9, 9).
The voltage across the diode is recorded and compared to this
attained by the commercial circuit simulation package ADS. In
Fig. 4(a), case (9, 1) shows great discrepancy with ADS for this
case treating eight cells as PEC, the longest one among the five
studied cases, which would introduce the greatest numerical inductance. PEC modeling in case (9, 3) is the same length as
the case (3, 1). Fig. 4(b) indicates that results of cases (9, 3)
and (3, 1) are the same. Although the results are closer to ADS
than case (9, 1), the discrepancies at the positive and negative
peaks are not negligible as PEC is used to connect the diode and
ground. In Fig. 4(c), cases (9, 9) and (3, 3) share the same accuracy. As there is no PEC modeling in cases (9, 9) and (3, 3), the
results are in better agreement with ADS than cases (9, 1), (3, 1),
and (9, 3). A more accurate simulation result can be achieved
when is equal to .

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