A new software suite for electromagnetics

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorIn recent years, computational electromagnetics (CEM) techniques have become increasingly important with the rapid advancements in technology in areas such as electromagnetic compatibility, antenna analysis, radar cross section (RCS), cellular phone-human body interaction, design of electrical and medical devices, target recognition and lightning strike simulation. Among a variety of numerical simulation tools existing in the commercial market, many are based on the method of moments (MoM), the finite-difference time-domain method (FDTD), and the finite element method (FEM). Also, they implement hybridization with high-frequency or asymptotic technique such as, physical optics (PO), the uniform geometrical theory of diffraction (UTD) and Multilevel Fast Multipole Algorithm (MLFMA) among others. It is worth to note that many of the commercial simulation tools existing in the market has been born as numerical in-house codes in the academic sector. In this context, it is important to note the contribution of the research group guided by Prof. Tapan K. Sarkar (Syracuse University) to the CEM field during last decade. The development of a new electromagnetic solver based on MoM has been carried out in order to provide fast and accurate solutions of a wide range of electromagnetic problems, especially for the solution of electrically large and complex problems. From other hand, the research group to which the author of the present Ph. D dissertation belongs has an important research line focused on the development of codes based on FEM. Then, the implementation of a FEM code makes possible the development of, not only an electromagnetic software based on an integral formulation of the electromagnetic problem, but a complete electromagnetic suite with also a differential formulation approach. Hence, the development of a new software suite for electromagnetics becomes the main objective of this Ph. D. dissertation. The suite will be composed by a professional graphical user interface (GUI) and two solver modules based on MoM and FEM, respectively. The GUI will provide tools for an easy and quick simulation process, the parametrization of geometric models in terms of symbolic variables or the use of an automatic goal oriented optimizer. The FEM module of the suite will present important unique features compared with other commercial software such as, the use of a novel iterative integral equation method for mesh truncation, the use of its own higher order set of basis functions and the use of parallel programming schemes from the beginning on its development. This module will also be able to perform the analysis of large antenna arrays using an infinite array approach. Although, the infinite array approach make uses of structures that are not a physically realistic, the analysis of this structures provides a reasonable good approximation with a less computing requirement than the analysis of the full problem. Finally, taking advantage of the existence in the suite of two of the most important computational electromagnetics numerical techniques such as, MoM and FEM, the hybridization between them seems an appropriate choice to perform complex simulation where the use of these techniques alone may not be efficiently appropriate. Thus, a modular approach to combine MoM and FEM techniques for the analysis of large structures or finite arrays with complex radiating elements have also been performed.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Multimedia y ComunicacionesPresidente: Maurizio Bozzi.- Secretario: Daniel Segovia Vargas.- Vocal: Rafael Rodríguez Boi