Microwave education supported by animations of wave propagation effects

Dealing with electromagnetic (EM) fields and microwaves for the first time, many students have problems to get an idea of the fields and their behavior in transmission-line structures and components. To reduce these barriers, animations generated by a time-domain field simulator can be used to demonstrate some basic time- and space-dependent properties of EM waves. In this paper, the application of a two-dimensional transmission-line matrix (2D-TLM) code for this purpose is described. Starting points are some introductory animations of basic wave propagation, e.g., in a parallel-plate waveguide, the incidence of a wave onto a lossy wall (skin effect), or the excitation of a wave in a dielectric slab (dielectric line). Later on, the fields in a number of transmission-line components like couplers or filters can be demonstrated in a very nice way. Further applications of this tool are found in demonstrating basic problems of electromagnetic compatibility like penetration through a metal shielding or through openings in a shelf including resonance effects. Such animations are shown during the lectures using a video projector. In addition, the examples are offered to the students on a Web page both as animated gifs and as applications files for a 2D-TLM program to repeat and/or modify the experiment.