Full-wave analysis of shielded cable configurations by the FDTD method

A numerical method is proposed to model transients in a shielded cable embedded in a three-dimensional field domain by using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The coaxial shielded cable is assumed to be a multiconductor transmission line (MTL). The in cell voltage and the current on the external shield surface are calculated by a full-wave method, while the core current and the core-to-shield voltage are analyzed by assuming the validity of the quasi-TEM propagation mode inside the shield. The internal and external shield surfaces are coupled by the transfer admittance and by the transfer impedance of the cable shield. The solution is obtained by the FDTD method combining the MTL equations with the field equations. The proposed time-domain method takes into account the frequency-dependent parameters of the cable conductors by recursive convolution techniques. The validation of the procedure is performed in simple test configurations.