Date Available

12-14-2011

Year of Publication

2008

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Document Type

Dissertation

College

Engineering

Department

Electrical Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. Robert J. Adams

Abstract

This dissertation proposes a modular fast direct (MFD) analysis method for a class of problems involving a large fixed platform region and a smaller, variable design region. A modular solution algorithm is obtained by first decomposing the problem geometry into platform and design regions. The two regions are effectively detached from one another using basic equivalence concepts. Equivalence principles allow the total system model to be constructed in terms of independent interaction modules associated with the platform and design regions. These modules include interactions with the equivalent surface that bounds the design region. This dissertation discusses how to analyze (fill and factor) each of these modules separately and how to subsequently compose the solution to the original system using the separately analyzed modules.

The focus of this effort is on surface integral equation formulations of electromagnetic scattering from conductors and dielectrics. In order to treat large problems, it is necessary to work with sparse representations of the underlying system matrix and other, related matrices. Fortunately, a number of such representations are available. In the following, we will primarily use the adaptive cross approximation (ACA) to fill the multilevel simply sparse method (MLSSM) representation of the system matrix. The MLSSM provides a sparse representation that is similar to the multilevel fast multipole method.

Solutions to the linear systems obtained using the modular analysis strategies described above are obtained using direct methods based on the local-global solution (LOGOS) method. In particular, the LOGOS factorization provides a data sparse factorization of the MLSSM representation of the system matrix. In addition, the LOGOS solver also provides an approximate sparse factorization of the inverse of the system matrix. The availability of the inverse eases the development of the MFD method. Because the behavior of the LOGOS factorization is critical to the development of the proposed MFD method, a significant part of this dissertation is devoted to providing additional analyses, improvements, and characterizations of LOGOS-based direct solution methods. These further developments of the LOGOS factorization algorithms and their application to the development of the MFD method comprise the most significant contributions of this dissertation.

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