1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
surprisingly effective example code listings, October 17, 2011
This review is from: The Finite Difference Time Domain Method for Electromagnetics: With MATLAB Simulations (Hardcover)
I'd just like to mention from personal experience that i was skeptical at first about whether or not i was wasting my time with this book. However it ended up becoming one of the most useful textbooks i've ever read, to the extent to which a textbook teaches the reader how to do something and how to understand something. from a pedagogical perspective I think this one is at the top of the heap.
this is an intro text to be sure. i would have paid an extra 20 bucks if there had been a section on dispersive media and/or Drude metals, but alas, the book does not go that far. no example codes on irregular grids either. but as an intro book this one goes from the basics of how fdtd works to detailing how to set up several typical EM problems, and even includes some of the more complicated topics such as CPML regions and nonlinear lumped element modeling.
from an academic perspective, yes, if you truly want to know every detail of FDTD go pick up the Taflove/Hagness book like anyone else would recommend you do. maybe it's just my particular learning style that the author used, but whatever it was, he hit the nail on the head. i went from knowing essentially nothing about FDTD to fine-tuning an impressive looking MATLAB simulation of a very cool nanophotonics experiment i ran with a pulsed terahertz source.
you can get a very impressive fdtd simulation running from these example codes. The only requirement is that, in my opinion, you MUST actually read the book. it is the only way you will be able to understand how the author wrote the subroutines, and what is necessary and what is not for your particular application. You may have to (as I did) write one or two small .m files of your own if you have unique geometries in your simulation or require additional modifications, but the code is written so well, integration of your own code with the author's is relatively seamless.
the bad news there will be no other help for you from anywhere except book if you can't immediately figure out how to get the example code running. the good news is that this is a very quick read, and the book is very clearly-laid out. if you invest a little time in it you will learn A LOT. i read the book cover to cover in my spare time over the course of about two weeks, and that was all the preparation i needed to figure out how to piece together the sample codes from the CD ROM. it can be done, and the code does work. good luck! :)
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book on FDTD implementation, June 15, 2009
This review is from: The Finite Difference Time Domain Method for Electromagnetics: With MATLAB Simulations (Hardcover)
This book is an excellent book for whomever is interested in building his/her own FDTD code. It uses MATLAB as the basis for programming, but since the coding style is written so clearly, it should be easy to convert to any other language when so desired.
More importantly (for me at least), I had been struggling with getting accurate results from commercial FDTD programs. Reading this book has helped me get a solid understanding of the underlying mechanisms of FDTD, which in turn has helped me setup simulation models in FDTD that run accurately without incurring too much additional simulation time overhead.
I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in, or is working with, FDTD. This book focuses mostly on the practical implementation and use of FDTD. For a more fundamental approach, I'd recommend Taflove's book, in addition to this one.
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A puzzle of m files, September 25, 2009
This review is from: The Finite Difference Time Domain Method for Electromagnetics: With MATLAB Simulations (Hardcover)
I am interesting in scattering. I went directly to chapter 11. Chapter is easy to follow. explains a bunch of m files. I took a look to the cd with the code. Several m files are sit in the directory chapter_11 and there are 3 subdirectories with examples. The directories with examples are missing several m files that I am guessing are spread around the other directories corresponding to other chapters. No user guide about which files you need or order to run them. I tried and start getting errors and errors of missing variables and m files. Files such as initialize_waveform. I found this particular m file in directories of other chapters. I figured it out and run it but surprise, now I was missing a variable c(speed of light). Could not find which m file it is defined. I did myself but more and more missing variables start showing up... The authors should have put all the files you need to run the examples in their own directories. My guess is that one cannot jump directly to a particular chapter and must follow the chapters in sequence... Summarizing: I could not run any of the examples in chapter 11 out of the cd
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