A Potential-Based Surface Operator for Modeling Lossy Conductors from DC to High Frequencies

Surface integral equation methods are appealing for the electromagnetic modeling of lossy conductors due to their ability to model the skin effect with only a surface mesh. However, they can be hindered by a lack of accuracy and numerical stability down to DC. We propose a new method based on electromagnetic potentials, rather than fields, which can accurately model lossy conductors from exactly DC to very high frequencies. Unlike existing potential-based methods, the proposed formulation involves deriving a surface operator for each object to model field penetration inside its volume, but does not significantly increase the number of unknowns compared to field-based methods. The accuracy of the proposed technique is verified numerically for structures representative of applications such as high-speed interconnects and electrically small antennas.