FDTD Simulation of Exposure of Biological Material to Electromagnetic Nanopulses

Abstract

Ultra-wideband (UWB) electromagnetic pulses of nanosecond duration, or nanopulses, are of considerable interest to the communications industry and are being explored for various applications in biotechnology and medicine. The propagation of a nanopulse through biological matter has been computed in the time domain using the finite difference-time domain method (FDTD). The approach required existing Cole-Cole model-based descriptions of dielectric properties of biological matter to be re-parametrized using the Debye model, but without loss of accuracy. The approach has been applied to several tissue types. Results show that the electromagnetic field inside a biological tissue depends on incident pulse rise time and width. Rise time dominates pulse behavior inside a tissue as conductivity increases. It has also been found that the amount of energy deposited by 20 $kV/m$ nanopulses is insufficient to change the temperature of the exposed material for the pulse repetition rates of 1 $MHz$ or less.