| In this thesis, a generic FDTD code utilizing the new Berenger Perfectly Matched Layer was developed and used to study the behaviour of various microstrip antennas, including standard patch geometries, as well as non-homogeneous substrate patches. The code was extended such that active elements and wire structures could also be integrated into the simulation. The FDTD technique has been shown to be an intuitive, robust, and accurate full-wave technique capable of modeling complex geometries, and yielding wideband results during a single computation run. The high computational run-time requirements of the method can be significantly reduced through parallelization of the FDTD algorithm. |
