Accelerated unconditionally stable FDTD scheme with modified operators

Abstract

Purpose – The locally one-dimensional (LOD) finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method features unconditional stability, yet its low accuracy in time can potentially become detrimental. Regarding the improvement of the method’s reliability, existing solutions introduce high-order spatial operators, which nevertheless cannot deal with the augmented temporal errors. The purpose of the paper is to describe a systematic procedure that enables the efficient implementation of extended spatial stencils in the context of the LOD-FDTD scheme, capable of reducing the combined space-time flaws without additional computational cost. Design/methodology/approach – To accomplish the goal, the authors introduce spatial derivative approximations in parametric form, and then construct error formulae from the update equations, once they are represented as a one-stage process. The unknown operators are determined with the aid of two error-minimization procedures, which equally suppress errors both in space and time. Further...