Width Confinement in 3D Dielectric Waveguides and Comparison to 2D Analytical Models

Two-dimensional (2D) analytical models are only approximations for 3D structures where one cross-sectional dimension is much larger than the other. This paper uses the finite-difference time-domain method (FDTD) to perform numerical experiments on fully 3D dielectric waveguide structures to compute the wave-impedance and the propagation-constant for finite-width dielectric waveguides. These data are used to determine the width required to achieve good correlation against 2D analytical models. Results show that width ≥ 10x height is the limit for good approximation.