Determining reflections for beam propagation algorithms

Reflections occur whenever different waveguide sections are concatenated. In this paper, we will give approximate formulas for determining the reflection coefficient. Starting with generalized transmission line equations we will derive general formulas where suitable approximations are introduced. These approximations allow the determination of the reflections with low numerical effort. The expressions were implemented in an FD-BPM algorithm to determine the field distribution in waveguide devices. For an application in CAD systems the reflection coefficient of the fundamental mode was computed with the approximate formulas. Numerical results were obtained for various concatenations of different waveguide sections. A comparison with the method of lines, a semi-analytic algorithm, shows a good agreement.