WIPL: a program for electromagnetic modeling of composite-wire andplate structures

WIPL is a program which allows fast and accurate analysis of antennas. The geometry of any metallic structure (even a very large structure) is defined as a combination of wires and plates. WIPL's analysis features include evaluations of the current distribution, near and far field, and impedance, admittance and s-parameters. The program uses an entire-domain Galerkin method. Efficiency of the program is based on the flexible geometrical model, and sophisticated basis functions. In this paper, the basic theory implemented in the program, and some results concerning TV UHF panel antennas and large horn antennas are given     

Evaluation of capacitance with prescribed accuracy adaptive methodbased on exact error estimation

This paper presented an adaptive method for a two-dimensional electrostatic analysis of air-filled two-conductor lines. The method is based on exact error estimates, and thus enables the evaluation of capacitance within prescribed accuracy limits. For the example of a transmission line consisting of square conductors considered, the characteristic impedance was estimated to be Z=75 ohms with a predefined relative error of less than δ_max=10^-6. The method can be generalized to two-dimensional and three-dimensional electrostatic analysis of arbitrary systems of conducting bodies in free space     

On the locally continuous formulation of surface doublets

Exact (locally continuous) formulation of doublets and particularly rooftop basis functions based on unitary vector concept are presented. Basic properties of such a formulation are examined showing many advantages when compared with classical (approximate) formulation. In particular, in the case of rooftop basis functions based on exact formulation, the shape quality factor is defined and optimal shapes of quadrilateral patches are determined. If such quadrilaterals are used for modeling of general structures, the number of unknowns needed in the analysis is almost halved when compared with modeling by triangular doublets     

Mobile Phone Antenna Performance and Power Absorption in Terms of Handset Size and Distance from User’s Head

In this work numerical simulation and measurements of three-dimensional radiation patterns of a mobile handset model in the presence of a human head phantom were performed at 1800 MHz. Based on theoretical and experimental results, the influence of the human head on the radiation efficiency of the handset has been investigated as a function of the handset size and the distance between the head and the handset during its operation. Furthermore, the relative amount of the electromagnetic power absorbed in the head has been obtained. It was found that significant reduction of the absorbed power (about 50%) with proportional increment of the handset radiation efficiency could be achieved by moving the phone for 1 cm only away from the head. Agreement between theoretical and experimental results was found to be very good.Theodore Zervos was born in Athens, Greece, on October 5, 1978. He received the diploma in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Patras, Patras, Greece, in 2001. He is currently a Postgraduate Student at the Laboratory of Electromagnetics, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Patras. He is also a doctoral scholar at the Mobile Communications Laboratory of the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications of NCSR Demokritos, Athens. His research interests include electromagnetic modelling, EM radiation measurements and interaction between the human body and mobile handsets antenna. Dipl. T. Zervos is a Member of the Technical Chamber of Greece. In June 2002, his thesis received the 2nd Award of Excellence in Telecommunications from Ericsson.Antonis Alexandridis (1962) is senior researcher in the Institute of informatics and Telecommunications (IIT) of Greek National Research Centre (NCSR) Demokritos. He received the diploma in Electrical Engineering from Technical University ofPatras, Greece (1985), and the Ph.D. degree from the same University (1992). From 1993 he is working in the Mobile Communications Lab of NCSR. Since 1999 he is responsible for the operation of the RF Anechoic Chamber of the IIT. His current interests include mobile communications, propagation models, spread spectrum systems and CDMA techniques, EMC measurements, human exposure to EM fields, interaction between human body and mobile terminals antennas and smart antennas.Vladimir V. Petrovic was born in 1965 in Belgrade, Serbia. He received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and D.Sc., degrees from the University of Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro in 1989, 1993, and 1996, respectively. He joined the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade in 1990, where at present he is an Assistant Professor in Electromagnetics and Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering. He is a co-author of a chapter in a monograph, a software package AWAS 2.0 (Artech House – Boston, London, 2002) and several journal and conference articles. His research interests are in numerical electromagnetics, especially in radiation and propagation problems in layered media.Kostas Dangakis was born in Kavala, Greece, in 1950. He received his Diploma in Electrical Engineering from NTUA (Athens, 1973) and his Ph.D. on Digital Modulation/Data Transmission from Techn. Univ. of Patras, Dept. of Electrical Engineering (1984). Since 1977, he has worked at the Inst. of Inform. & Telecom. (IIT) of NCSR Demokritos, in projects related to voice/data/video signal encryption, synchronisation techniques in TDM systems, digital modulation techniques/data transmission, Spread Spectrum/CDMA techniques, mobile communications, conformance testing (DECT, ERMES), radio propagation, channel characterization and antennas. He is research director at IIT and has been project leader of several R & D projects.Branko M. Kolundzija Antonije R. Djordjevic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, on April 28, 1952. He received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and D.Sc. degrees from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, in 1975, 1977, and 1979, respectively. In 1975, he joined the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, as a Teaching Assistant. He was promoted to an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor, in 1982, 1988, and 1992, respectively. In 1983, he was a Visiting Associate Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY. Since 1992, he has also been an Adjunct Scholar with Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. In 1997, he was elected a Corresponding Member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. His main area of interest is numerical electromagnetics, in particular applied to fast digital signal interconnects, wire and surface antennas, microwave passive circuits, and electromagnetic-compatibility problems.C. Soras received both his diploma and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Patras, Patras, Greece, in 1981 and 1989 respectively. He was a Lecturer in the Laboratory of Electromagnetics of the Electrical and Computer Engineering department of the University of Patras in Greece from 1991 to 2001, where currently serves as an Assistant Professor. He is teaching the basic electromagnetic courses and at the senior undergraduate / graduate level computational electromagnetics. His current research interests focus on computational electromagnetics, multiple element antennas for diversity and MIMO terminal devices and indoor radio wave propagation. Prof. Soras is a member of IEEE, Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society and the Technical Chamber of Greece.     

Multiminima heuristic methods for antenna optimization

Two general approaches to multiminima optimization are considered. The first approach is based on repetition of a single minima method (e.g., the Nelder-Mead simplex applied to the best solution in a set of random trials). The second approach is based on a coarse estimation of local minima using initial set of points and local optimization starting from these local minima (e.g., random search as a generator of the initial set of points and Nelder-Mead simplex as a local optimizer). A comparison of various optimization algorithms has been done on one analytical problem and two well-known examples of antenna design. It is found that: a) the multiminima method based on coarse estimation enables finding more minima with smaller number of iterations than that based on repetition, b) the best multiminima methods are comparable with the best single minima methods in a number of iterations needed for finding the global minima, and c) the multiminima method based on coarse estimation restarted with different weighting coefficients of multiobjective cost function enables efficient Pareto optimization.     

Accurate solution of square scatterer as benchmark for validationof electromagnetic modeling of plate structures

An infinitesimally thin-square scatterer, of size λ×λ, excited normally by an incident plane wave, which is polarized along a scatterer edge, is analyzed. The accurate solution of its current distribution is found in the form of a double series of basis functions, which automatically satisfy the continuity equation at the plate edges and include the edge effect. The coefficients that multiply basis functions are determined starting from the electric field integral equation by using the Galerkin method. The solution obtained for the order of approximation n=8 is adopted as a benchmark. The corresponding coefficients are tabulated and graphs of such obtained current distribution are given. The solution adopted as a benchmark is applied for comparison of rooftop basis functions and polynomial entire-domain basis functions. The relative error of the mean absolute value of current deviation is used as an error metric     

Automatic mesh generation using single- and double-nodesegmentation techniques

The desired properties of quadrilateral mesh-generation techniques, well-suited for solving surface integral equations by the method of moments, are discussed. Based on this investigation, two iterative techniques for segmentation of electrically large surfaces are developed. Each iteration consists of two steps: (1) long edges are subdivided into the minimal number of short edges; and (2) large plates are subdivided by using either one interior node per long edge (the single-node technique), or two interior nodes per long edge (the double-node technique). In each of these cases, the subdivision of a large plate is performed by using three specific basic schemes, not affected by the subdivision of neighboring large plates. In addition, a constraint for segmentation of long interior edges is proposed, enabling generation of more uniform meshes. The proposed techniques are applied to the methods based on both subdomain and entire-domain approximation. It is found that, in most cases, the double-node technique is superior to the single node technique     

Solution of large complex problems in computational electromagnetics using higher-order basis in MoM with out-of-core solvers

In a recent invited paper in the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, some of the challenging problems in computational electromagnetics were presented. One of the objectives of this note is to simply point out that challenging to one may be simple to another. This is demonstrated through an example cited in that article. The example chosen is a Vivaldi antenna array. What we discuss here also applies to the other examples presented in that article, but we have chosen the Vivaldi antenna array to help us make our point. It is shown in this short article that a higher-order basis using a surface integral equation a la a PMCHWT (Poggio-Miller-Chu-Harrington-Wu-Tsai) method-of-moments formulation may still be the best weapon that one have in today's arsenal to deal with challenging complex electromagnetic analysis problems. Here, we have used the commercially available code WIPL-D to carry out all the computations using laptop/desktop systems. The second objective of this paper is to present an out-of-core solver. The goal is to demonstrate that an out-of-core 32-bit-system-based solver can be as efficient as a 64-bit in-core solver. This is quite contrary to the popular belief that an out-of-core solver is generally much slower than an in-core solver. This can be significant, as the difference in the cost of a 32-bit system can be 1/30 of a 64-bit system of similar capabilities using current computer architectures. For the 32-bit system, we consider a Pentium 4 system, whereas for the 64-bit system, we consider an Itanium 2 system for comparison. The out-of-core solver can go beyond the 2 GB limitation for a 32-bit system and can be run on ordinary laptop/desktop; hence, we can simultaneously have a much lower hardware investment while better performance for a sophisticated and powerful electromagnetic solver. The system resources and the CPU times are also outlined.     

Electromagnetic simulation of complex and electrically large structures in WIPL-D Pro [Application Notes]

This article has demonstrated the application of higher order basis functions, smart reduction of expansion orders, and multilevel fast multipole method in efficient 3-D EM simulation of complex and electrically large structures (from compact multiband antenna for wireless applications to 160 long aircraft scatterer) at a desktop computer.     

Comparison of a class of subdomain and entire domain basisfunctions automatically satisfying KCL

Accuracy, number of unknowns, and CPU time are compared for piecewise linear subdomain basis functions and polynomial entire domain basis functions. Both types of functions automatically satisfy a continuity equation at wire ends and junctions, according to Kirchoff's current law (KCL). The relative root mean square (RMS) current deviation is chosen as the error metric. An electrically short scatterer, a crossed wire scatterer and an electrically long scatterer are used for comparison. Currents are obtained by solving the electric field integral equation (EFIE), by means of the Galerkin method. It was shown that in most cases, for the same accuracy required, the entire domain approximation uses three to five times less numbers of unknowns and 10-100 times less CPU time than the subdomain approximation. Generally, such efficiency is achieved by using entire domain expansions the order of which is up to n=5 and cannot be significantly improved by using higher order expansions