A study of MLFMA for large-scale scattering problems

This research is centered in computational electromagnetics with a focus on solving large-scale problems accurately in a timely fashion using first principle physics. Error control of the translation operator in 3-D is shown. A parallel implementation of the multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA) was studied as far as parallel efficiency and scaling. The large-scale scattering program (LSSP), based on the ScaleME library, was used to solve ultra-large-scale problems including a 200λ sphere with 20 million unknowns. As these large-scale problems were solved, techniques were developed to accurately estimate the memory requirements. Careful memory management is needed in order to solve these massive problems. The study of MLFMA in large-scale problems revealed significant errors that stemmed from inconsistencies in constants used by different parts of the algorithm. These were fixed to produce the most accurate data possible for large-scale surface scattering problems. Data was calculated on a missile-like target using both high frequency methods and MLFMA. This data was compared and analyzed to determine possible strategies to increase data acquisition speed and accuracy through multiple computation method hybridization.