=== Source Variety in EM.Tempo ===
Before you can run an FDTD simulation, you have to define a source to excite your project’s physical structure. [[EM.Tempo]] offers a variety of excitation mechanisms for your physical structure depending on your particular type of modeling problem or application:
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In the most general sense, one can consider two fundamental types of excitation sources for an FDTD simulation: a lumped source and a distributed source. A lumped sources is localized at a single mesh point in the computational domain, while a distributed source is spread over several mesh cells. Among the source types of the above list, the microstrip port, CPW port, coaxial port, waveguide port, plane wave and Gaussian beam sources are indeed special cases of a distributed source for specific applications.
A lumped source is the most commonly used way of exciting a structure in [[EM.Tempo]]. A lumped source is a voltage source with a series internal resistor that must be placed on a PEC or thin wire line object that is parallel to one of the three principal axes. A lumped source is displayed as a small red arrow on the host line. Lumped sources are typically used to define ports and compute the port characteristics like S/Y/Z parameters. Using simple lumped sources, you can simulate a variety of transmission line structures including filters, couplers or antenna feeds. This approach may become less accurate at higher frequencies when the details of the feed structure become important and can no longer be modeled with highly localized lumped ports. In such cases, it is recommended to use “Distributed Sources”, which utilize accurate modal field distributions at the ports for calculation of the incident and reflected waves. Waveguide source is used to excite the dominant TE<sub>10</sub> mode of a hollow rectangular waveguide. Other special types of distributed sources are microstrip port, CPW port and coaxial ports that can be used effectively to excite their respective transmission line structures.
When you create an array of an object type that can host one of the above source types, you can also associate a source array with that array object.
[[Image:Info_icon.png|30px]] Click here to learn more about '''[[Preparing_Physical_Structures_for_Electromagnetic_Simulation#Modeling_Finite-Sized_Source_Arrays | Modeling Finite-Sized Source Arrays]]'''.
A plane wave source is a popular excitation method that is used for calculation of the radar cross section of targets or reflection and transmission characteristics of periodic surfaces. A Gaussian beam source is another source type that is highly localized as opposed to the uniform plane wave. For both plane wave and Gaussian beam sources, [[EM.Tempo]] requires a finite incidence surface to calculate the excitation. When you create either of these sources, a plane wave box or a Gaussian beam box is created as part of their definition. A trident symbol on the box shows the propagation vector as well as the E-field and H-field polarization vectors. The time domain plane wave or Gaussian beam excitation is calculated on the surface of this box and injected into the computational domain. The plane wave box is displayed in the project workspace as a purple wireframe box enclosing the structure, while the Gaussian beam box appears as a green wireframe box. Both boxes have an initial default size with an offset of 0.2λ<sub>0</sub> from the largest bounding box enclosing your entire physical structure. In both source dialogs, the radio button '''Size: Default''' is selected by default. The radio button '''Size: Custom''' allows you to set the excitation box manually. The values for the coordinates of '''Corner 1''' and '''Corner 2''' can now be changed. Corner 1 is the front lower left corner and Corner 2 is the rear upper right corner of the box. The corner coordinates are defined in the world coordinate system (WCS).
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