Parallel FD-TD simulation of radiobase antennae

The rigorous characterisation of the behaviour of a radiobase antenna for wireless communication systems is a hot topic both for antenna or communication system design and for radioprotection-hazard reasons. Such a characterisation deserves a numerical solution, and the use of a finite-difference time-domain (FD-TD) approach is an attractive candidate. Unfortunately, it has strong memory and CPU-time requirements. Numerical complexity can be successfully afforded by using parallel computing. The parallel implementation of the FD-TD code, individuating the theoretical lower bound for its parallel execution time are discussed and the findings achieved on the APE/Quadrics massively parallel systems are presented. Results obtained from the simulation of actual radiobase antennae, clearly demonstrate that massively parallel processing is a viable approach to solving electromagnetic problems, allowing the simulation of radiating devices which could not be modelled through conventional computing systems. The tests showed a sustained computational speed equal to 17% of the theoretical maximum.