Mode Analysis of Rectangular Polymer Microwave Fibers Based on Finite-Difference Frequency-Domain Method

The polymer microwave fiber (PMF) is an attractive millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) communication link since it is high-rate, low-loss, cheap and flexible. In this paper, the propagation modes of the rectangular PMF are analyzed based on the compact two-dimensional (2-D) finite-difference frequency-domain (FDFD) method. Results show that the electric field of the dominant mode of PMF becomes more and more concentrated inside the PMF with increasing frequency. The high-order modes and their dispersion relations are also calculated. The calculated propagation constants are compared with that from the approximate analytical method to verify the accuracy of the compact 2-D FDFD method.