Performance Evaluation of the ADI-FDTD Method on the Simulation of Optical Devices

This work checks the accuracy of the ADI-FDTD method for simulations of guided optical propagation regarding two optical devices: a directional coupler and a distributed Bragg reflector in a planar waveguide. The results show that despite the ADI-FDTD method is unconditionally stable as the numerical time step increases, which reduces the total time steps and the runtime compared with the conventional explicit FDTD method, its precision otherwise may decline at a level that may prevent an accurate assessment of the optical devices operational characteristics.