Study of electromagnetic band‐gap (EBG) structures has become a hot topic in computational electromagnetics. In this article, some EBG structures integrated inside a circular waveguide are studied. They are formed by a series of air‐gaps within a circular dielectric‐filled waveguide. A body‐of‐revolution finite‐difference time‐domain (BOR‐FDTD) method is adopted for analysis of such waveguide structures, due to their axial symmetric properties. The opening ends of the waveguide are treated as a matched load using an unsplit perfectly matched layer technique. Excitations on a waveguide in BOR‐FDTD are demonstrated. Numerical results of various air‐gap lengths with respect to the period of separation are given, showing an interesting tendency of EBG behavior. A chirping‐and‐tapering technique is applied on the EBG pattern to improve the overall performance. The proposed EBG structures may be applied into antenna structures or other system for unwanted signal suppression. Results show that the BOR‐FDTD offers a good alternative in analyzing axial symmetric configurations, as it offers enormous savings in computational time and memory comparing with a general 3D‐FDTD algorithm. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 49: 2201–2206, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.22668