Keywords
Maxwell equations, electrical engineering computing, parallel algorithms, parallel architectures, systolic arrays
Abstract
We present a novel strategy for incorporating massive parallelism into the solution of Maxwell's equations using finite-difference time-domain methods. In a departure from previous techniques wherein spatial parallelism is used, our approach exploits massive temporal parallelism by computing all of the time steps in parallel. Furthermore, in contrast to other methods which appear to concentrate on explicit schemes such as Yee's (1966) algorithm, our strategy uses the implicit Crank-Nicolson technique which provides superior numerical properties. We show that the use of temporal parallelism results in algorithms which offer a massive degree of coarse grain parallelism with minimum communication and synchronization requirements. Due to these features, the time-parallel algorithms are particularly suitable for implementation on emerging massively parallel multiple instruction-multiple data (MIMD) architectures. The methodology is applied to a circular cylindrical configuration, which serves as a testbed problem for the approach, to demonstrate the massive parallelism that can be exploited. We also discuss the generalization of the methodology for more complex problems.
Original Publication Citation
Fijany, A., et al. "A Massively Parallel Computation Strategy for FDTD: Time and Space Parallelism Applied to Electromagnetics Problems." Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on 43.12 (1995): 1441-9
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Jensen, Michael A.; Fijany, Amir; Rahmat-Samii, Yahya; and Barhen, Jacob, "A massively parallel computation strategy for FDTD: time and space parallelism applied to electromagnetics problems" (1995). Faculty Publications. 684.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/684
Document Type
Peer-Reviewed Article
Publication Date
1995-12-01
Permanent URL
http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/1004
Publisher
IEEE
Language
English
College
Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology
Department
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Copyright Status
© 1995 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.
Copyright Use Information
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