A Time-Domain Method of Auxiliary Sources for Efficient Analysis of Transient Electromagnetic Scattering by Moderately Conductive Cylinders

Abstract: This paper presents a time-domain implementation of the Method of Auxiliary Sources (MAS) combined with the Standard Impedance Boundary Condition (SIBC) for electromagnetic scattering problems involving cylindrical scatterers with finite but moderate conductivity. The proposed approach focuses on solving the two-dimensional problem using a first-order SIBC, which is valid when the conductivity is sufficiently higher than the maximum spectral frequency times the dielectric permittivity of the scatterer. This regime includes moderately conductive materials--such as carbon-based composites, conductive polymers, and doped dielectrics--that are increasingly used in real-world radio-frequency applications, including wearable electronics, electromagnetic interference shielding, and biomedical sensors. Under the above validity conditions, the interaction between the incident wave and the scatterer is dominated by surface effects, allowing for an efficient and accurate modeling strategy without the need to compute internal fields. The theoretical formulation of the time-domain MAS-SIBC method is developed, followed by extensive numerical testing on various geometries whose cross section is a closed curve. Such geometries include circular, elliptical, super-circular, rounded-triangular, and inverted-elliptical scatterers. A planar geometry is also tested. All results are validated against analytical solutions and commercial frequency-domain solvers, demonstrating the accuracy and practical potential of the proposed method. The findings suggest that time-domain MAS-SIBC offers a promising and computationally efficient approach for modeling scattering from materials even with moderate conductivity.