3-D Modeling of Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in the Uniform Earth-Ionosphere Cavity Using a Commercial FDTD Software Package

Extremely low frequency (3-3000 Hz) electromagnetic (EM) wave propagation in the (3-D) cavity composed of the earth's crust and uniform ionospheric lossy layers is modeled using the finite-difference time-domain algorithm set in a commercial simulation software. EM propagation and attenuation in the Earth-ionosphere waveguide are computed, and the Schumann resonance (SR) parameters are obtained from the spectra. The overall accuracy of the SR parameters surpasses 90%, despite a fairly coarse resolution of the system. We show that a commercial software can accurately and efficiently model such a large and complex geophysical system.