MPI-MLFMA-MOM ELECTROMAGNETIC SOLVER

This code is the most recent and advanced version of the former HEMCUVE

PRODUCT OVERVIEW:

HEMCUVE is a general purpose software package for the

electromagnetic design and analysis of complex 3-D
electromagnetic engineering problems. This software is the
culmination of fourteen years of research, and includes the
most recent advances in computational electromagnetics
(CEM). It provides a unified environment to solve a wide
range of electromagnetic problems for a wide variety of
industries, from radiofrequency (RF) to optical frequencies.
Typical applications include antenna placement,
EMC/EMI/EMR analysis and design, and RCS/radar imaging
analysis and control of modern vessels, aircraft, satellites,
cars and any other kind of complex platform; shielding
effectiveness and EMC/EMI analysis of cable harnesses;
analysis and design of composite panels and metamaterials;
and the analysis and design of circuits from microwave to
optical (plasmonic) frequencies. The electromagnetic kernel
is based on the well-known surface integral equation-method
of moment (SIE-MoM) formulation, which is a full wave
solution of Maxwells integral equation in the frequency
domain whose accuracy and versatility have made it the
most usual reference solution in CEM problems.
The multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA) was included
into HEMCUVE to accelerate the SIE-MoM kernel. MLFMA is
based on the multipolar expansion of the radiated fields on a
multilevel decomposition of the geometry. It enables the
efficient computation of matrix-vector products, dramatically
reducing the computational cost and memory requirements
of MoM for the solution of problems with thousands or
millions of unknowns. For very large-scale problems, with
hundreds of millions of unknowns, the high-scalability
MLFMA-fast Fourier transform (MLFMA-FFT) algorithm was
proposed and incorporated into HEMCUVE. MLFMA-FFT is one
of the most relevant recent advances in CEM, allowing to
take advantage of the latest breakthroughs in high
performance computing (HPC) massively parallel distributed
computers. The concurrent advances in algorithms and
hardware give the chance of solving problems that were
unattainable in the past, allowing CEM solutions and
industrial necessities to get closer. Indeed, HEMCUVE solved
the largest problems in CEM up to now, with more than 150,
620 and 1000 million unknowns, using supercomputers at
CESGA and CnitS Spanish supercomputing centers. The
successful resolution of these challenges deserved to be
awarded with the European Union PRACE Award and the Intel
Itanium Innovation Award in the category of Computationally
Intensive Applications.

Last modified: 19/09/2016

Contact:
Luis Landesa / JJ. M. Taboada Fernando Obelleiro e-mail: llandesa@unex.es
Dept. Tec. Computadores y Comunicaciones Dept. Teora de la Seal y Comunicaciones tabo@unex.es
University of Extremadura, 10003 Cceres, SPAIN University of Vigo, 36200 Vigo, SPAIN obi@com.uvigo.es
MASSIVELY PARALLEL COMPUTING:

Scalability is the ability of a code to take benefit from

the use of large parallel computers and
supercomputers. The biggest challenge to high
scalability in computational electromagnetics was
finding the optimal balance of four criteria: workload
balancing, data locality, memory footprint and
communication requirements.
HEMCUVE gained a major competitive advantage with
the introduction of the high scalability MLFMA-FFT
algorithm. The high scalability of FMM-FFT for
distributed computations is combined with the high
efficiency of MLFMA for shared-memory ones. This
allows adopting a divide and conquer strategy that
optimally fits to any computing architecture. The
workload is equally distributed among processors while
keeping good data locality. To decrease the
communication requirements among multiple cores, a
hybrid parallel algorithm is applied using Message
Passing Interface (MPI) protocol between distributed
nodes and the Open Multiprocessing (OpenMP) API
within each shared-memory node. The calculations
perform almost independently inside each node, with
minimum communication among distributed nodes,
providing unprecedented optimal scalability up to 1024
parallel processors. Thereby, HEMCUVE is an optimal Each release of HEMCUVE improved the load balancing,
approach to get maximum performance of any modern decreased the amount of memory consumed, and
achieved a better performance and scalability.
computing or supercomputing architecture.

Contact:
Luis Landesa / JJ. M. Taboada Fernando Obelleiro e-mail: llandesa@unex.es
Dept. Tec. Computadores y Comunicaciones Dept. Teora de la Seal y Comunicaciones tabo@unex.es
University of Extremadura, 10003 Cceres, SPAIN University of Vigo, 36200 Vigo, SPAIN obi@com.uvigo.es
GEOMETRICAL DESIGN:

The geometrical description is

accomplished using a Computer Aided
Design (CAD) environment, common to
the environment used by naval and
aircraft architects and designers. This
significantly expedites the geometry
specification.
The CAD model is validated and
transformed into an electromagnetic
model suited for numerical computations
according with the user defined
electromagnetic specifications.
The program provides debugging tools to
automatically find model anomalies.
Meshing tools are also provided to
automatically control the mesh resolution
of the model, including adaptive
refinements.

HIERARCHICAL CLUSTERING:

Application of MLFMA-FFT requires the hierarchical domain

decomposition of the geometry. A bottom-up strategy is
adopted using a Morton bit-interleaving fast algorithm to
obtain the oct-tree multilevel decomposition of the geometry
in boxes. Morton ordering guarantees optimum 3-D data
locality, which is a key point for parallel performance. Bit-
interleaving and optimal tree data-structures provide oct-
tree generation and neighbor searches in negligible time,
without having to transverse complex linked lists. This
results in a many-fold speed-up of the simulations.
Coupling between elements is then computed at the level of
oct-tree boxes, dramatically reducing the required number of
interactions in a matrix-vector product. The entire process is
performed transparently to the user.

DOMAIN DECOMPOSITION:

MLFMA-FFT is used in synergy with a multilevel additive

Schwarz domain decomposition (DD) preconditioner for the
solution large problems presenting multiscale and/or
multiphysics features. The judicious selection of sub-domains
allows for the isolation of the different scale/physics sub-
problems, yielding an efficient and very effective
preconditioner for the integral equation matrix system that
dramatically improves convergence and speeds-up solving
time.

Contact:
Luis Landesa / JJ. M. Taboada Fernando Obelleiro e-mail: llandesa@unex.es
Dept. Tec. Computadores y Comunicaciones Dept. Teora de la Seal y Comunicaciones tabo@unex.es
University of Extremadura, 10003 Cceres, SPAIN University of Vigo, 36200 Vigo, SPAIN obi@com.uvigo.es
 APPLICATIONS:

EMC/EMI/EMR: Analysis and control of

electromagnetic coupling, interference and
disturbances between onboard systems, as
well as near field strength to fight against
hazard of electromagnetic radiation to
personnel (HERP), ordnance (HERO), and/or
fuel (HERF).
Antenna placement and design: Analysis of
antennas mounted onboard large complex
structure, e.g. ship, aircraft, satellite, car.
Strong electromagnetic coupling between
antennas and structural elements of the
supporting platform may lead to strongly
mismatched impedances and/or coverage
blockages. This demands the design of ad hoc
antenna/platform solutions from the earliest
design stages, enabling the optimization of
antenna pattern, coverage, blockage and
input impedance, as well as fighting against
hazard of electromagnetic radiation and
minimization of EMI among systems onboard.
Design of practical antenna problems
involving wire antennas, aperture antennas,
printed antennas, antenna arrays or
broadband antennas.
Radar imaging: Calculation of main
scattering centers of a target and the
scattering mechanism for radar cross section
reduction (RCSR), radar signature prediction
and control, or design of stealthy units with
improved signature-imaging properties,
among other applications.

Contact:
Luis Landesa / JJ. M. Taboada Fernando Obelleiro e-mail: llandesa@unex.es
Dept. Tec. Computadores y Comunicaciones Dept. Teora de la Seal y Comunicaciones tabo@unex.es
University of Extremadura, 10003 Cceres, SPAIN University of Vigo, 36200 Vigo, SPAIN obi@com.uvigo.es
Matching Unit Optimization: HEMCUVE
incorporates a matching unit optimizer for
the design of broadband/narrowband
antenna impedance matching units. The
optimizer can be fed with simulated data or
with impedances measured at the antenna
terminals. The algorithm reduces the
search across different network topologies
of growing complexity by the means of a
generalized network description, in which
the algorithm decides whether a reactive
element is inductive or capacitive. It
accounts for constrained lossy elements,
tolerances through Monte Carlo
simulations, and network on-site tuning.

Contact:
Luis Landesa / JJ. M. Taboada Fernando Obelleiro e-mail: llandesa@unex.es
Dept. Tec. Computadores y Comunicaciones Dept. Teora de la Seal y Comunicaciones tabo@unex.es
University of Extremadura, 10003 Cceres, SPAIN University of Vigo, 36200 Vigo, SPAIN obi@com.uvigo.es
TOWARDS NANOTECHNOLOGY:

Plasmonics is a flourishing field of science and

technology that explores how electromagnetic
fields can be confined over dimensions
smaller than the wavelength, surpassing the
diffraction limit. It is based on interaction
processes between electromagnetic radiation
and conduction electrons at metallic interfaces
or in small metallic nanostructures, leading to
an enhanced optical near field of
subwavelength dimensions (localized strong
plasmonic resonances - LSPR). These abilities
enable a large number of potential leading-
edge applications in nanoscience, from
nanoscale optical microscopy and
spectroscopy to molecular response
enhancement, optical lithography,
photovoltaic, lasing, wireless optical
communications or quantum processing,
among others.
However, the plasmonic optical properties of
metals are quite different from those
presented at lower frequencies, making it
impossible to directly downscale the
microwave traditional designs to the optical
regime. There is therefore an increasing
demand for rigorous and efficient tools to aid
the accurate engineering of the optical
response of arbitrarily shaped plasmonic
systems and metamaterials.
HEMCUVE was a pioneer demonstrating the
feasibility and high precision of the surface
integral equation and fast MLFMA solutions
applied to optical plasmonic problems and
metamaterials. The integral-equation
approach brings important advantages over
the differential techniques usually applied in
optics. It avoids the discretization of volumes
and surrounding media, dramatically reducing
the required number of unknowns and
enabling the solution of very large-scale, real
world nanoscience and nanotechnology
problems.

Contact:
Luis Landesa / JJ. M. Taboada Fernando Obelleiro e-mail: llandesa@unex.es
Dept. Tec. Computadores y Comunicaciones Dept. Teora de la Seal y Comunicaciones tabo@unex.es
University of Extremadura, 10003 Cceres, SPAIN University of Vigo, 36200 Vigo, SPAIN obi@com.uvigo.es