A Hybrid FDTD Method for Co-simulation of Antenna and Rectifier Circuit

In this paper, we proposed an efficient and accurate hybrid Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method to study the electromagnetic (EM) coupling and response characteristics of an whole rectenna, which combines the full-wave finite difference time domain (FDTD) method with the transmission line equation to predict the voltage and current responses of the rectifier circuit. This method combines a full-wave FDTD method, a transmission line equation, and equivalent circuit model of the nonlinear load together. And the improved node analysis (MNA) method is also implemented through a set of appropriate boundary conditions. This method has a good agreement with HSPICE. In addition, it has been successfully applied to predict the transient voltage and current responses in a real rectenna system.