Generalized Network Model for Energization of Grounding Electrodes

The main difference between the application of the method of moments (MoM) to grounding system and antenna analysis is the shunt energization by the injection of current. There is no consensus on the modeling of such energization, which is also crucial for the definition of quantities that characterize grounding system time and frequency behavior. The contributions of this paper are as follows: The presentation of a simple and unified approach to model all important cases of energization based on a generalized network representation of the grounding electrodes; the demonstration that the mesh current method, whose matrix equation is identical to that of the MoM, leads to straightforward procedures in the analysis of all cases of energization; and the approach enables the computation of uniquely defined impedances to ground and transfer impedances at arbitrary points at the grounding electrodes (required for N-port representation) by simple matrix manipulations. The proposed approach is general since it allows for a rigorous full-wave and an approximate quasi-static modeling, depending on the choice of Green's functions.