If your physical structure has two or more sources, but you have not defined any ports, all the lumped sources excite the structure simultaneously. However, when you assign N ports to the sources, then you have a multiport structure that is characterized by an N×N scattering matrix, an N×N impedance matrix, and an N×N admittance matrix. To calculate these matrices, [[EM.Cube]] uses a binary excitation scheme in conjunction with the principle of linear superposition. In this binary scheme, the structure is analyzed N times. Each time one of the N port-assigned sources is excited, and all the other port-assigned sources are turned off.
For the computation of the S-parameters in [[EM.Tempo]], the source associated with each port is excited separately with all the other ports turned off. When the jth port is excited, all the S<sub>ij</sub> parameters are calculated together based on the following definition:
:<math> S_{ij} = \sqrt{\frac{Re(Z_i)}{Re(Z_j)}} \cdot \frac{V_j - Z_j^*I_j}{V_i+Z_i I_i} </math>
where V<sub>i</sub> is the voltage across Port i, I<sub>i</sub> is the current flowing into Port i and Z<sub>i</sub> is the characteristic impedance of Port i. The sweep loop then moves to the next port until all ports have been excited.
{{Note|In order to obtain correct results, the port impedance must equal the characteristic impedance of the transmission line on which the port is established. This is not automatically taken care of by EM.Tempo.}}