Practical implementation of the spatial images technique for the analysis of shielded multilayered printed circuits

Abstract

In this paper, a practical implementation of the spatial images technique for the analysis of shielded multilayered printed circuits inside convex cavities is proposed. A new method is introduced in order to automatically locate the images surrounding the structure in order to impose the appropriate boundary conditions for the potentials. The boundary conditions are imposed at discrete points along the cavity wall and, therefore, the technique proposed is an approximation to the exact cavity modeling. Furthermore, for the analysis of electrically long cavities, the use of several rings of images surrounding the entire cavity at different heights is employed. Using the special features of the formulation, a new method of moments implementation combined with the spatial images technique is proposed in order to efficiently analyze practical multilayered printed filters, considerably reducing the computational cost. Several examples with CPU time comparisons are provided, demonstrating the accuracy and efficiency of the new technique. A novel transversal filter in a trapezium-shaped cavity is designed, manufactured, and tested for the first time using the spatial images technique.