In this paper, we have analysed frequency-dispersion characteristics of higher-order modes for uniform planar transmission lines, using the 2-dimensional finite-difference time-domain method. The method presented in this paper uses both informations of amplitude and phase of the electromagnetic spectrum to determine resonant frequencies, while methods previously reported use the magnitude only. This algorithm is very useful when a resonant mode has a relatively small magnitude, where the identification of the resonant mode is quite difficult. Numerical results show that a strip line supports few higher-order modes within the frequency range of 20 GHz, but there occur many higher-order modes in the structure of grounded coplanar waveguide, where resonant frequencies of the first higher-order mode is very close to those of the fundamental mode and there occur lots of very adjacent higher-order modes. As in this example, for the analysis of planar transmission lines which support many resonant modes very close each other, the method presented in this paper can be applied very efficiently.