Cartesian Mesh Generator for Parallel Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method

In order to generate discrete geometric-model that can be solved by the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, and avoid complicated manual operations, an efficient parallel mesh generation technique for massively parallel FDTD simulation was presented. The parallel mesh generator is capable of dissecting arbitrary 3D multi-material models, with triangle-facet computer aided design files as input data. Without the need for excessive data communication between the processors, its parallel efficiency was close to 100% in the test. The coupling effect of a simple computer case with a microstrip board was simulated by the FDTD method, based on this mesh generator. The results by the FDTD coincided with the ones calculated by the commercial electromagnetic simulation software, demonstrating the correctness of this mesh dissection method. Finally, when dissecting a real computer case with 250 processors and the grid number of 0.6 billion, the CPU time was only about 0.2 s. This efficient mesh dissection indicates that the proposed parallel mesh generation technique can efficiently solve the modeling in massively parallel FDTD simulation.