Vector and Parallel Implementations for the FDTD Analysis of Millimeter Wave Planar Antennas

The 3D Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method is a powerful numerical technique for directly solving Maxwell's equations. This paper describes its implementation on high speed computers. This technique is used here for the analysis of millimeter wave planar antennas. In our algorithm, Berenger's Perfectly Matched Layers (PML) are implemented as absorbing boundary conditions to mimic free space. Dielectric and metallic losses are taken into account in a recursive and dispersive formulation. We present the main techniques implemented to optimize the non-sequential program on vector computers. Besides, two parallel supercomputers of different architectures as well as a multi-user network of Sun workstations are used to investigate the parallel FDTD code. The performances obtained on vector/distributed memory massively parallel/hybrid computers show that the FDTD algorithm is ideally suited for the implementations on both vector and parallel computers. Comparisons with experimental results in the millimeter wave frequency band validate our codes.

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