Evaluation of Numerical Methods for Multi-GHz SAR Computation

Abstract

This work studies the feasibility of a full-wave simulation of field absorption at high frequencies, up to 10 GHz, with general purpose numerical methods and geometries with sizes in the order of a human body. Simple geometries are analyzed, assuming the material properties of water in the range of 1 to 10 GHz for its inner region. Three different methods are evaluated: the finite integration technique (FIT), finite element method (FEM), and method of moments (MoM), to determine the result convergence and required computational resources for each solution. The results show that already at 10 GHz is difficult to perform the analysis with moderate computational power (up to 70 GB RAM), but some approximations might be exploited since field penetration is mostly limited to the surface region in those ranges.