KSEF RDE: Novel high fidelity methods for antenna and circuit modeling

Computational methods for electromagnetic modeling are critical to the development of systems and devices including high-speed circuits, antennas, and platforms incorporating these devices. The latter range from cell phones to motherboards to automobiles. The importance of computer modeling to the analysis and design of such products has motivated significant research in the field of computational electromagnetics (CEM). A longstanding and practical CEM challenge is the development of a single method for general frequencies and meshes. This is difficult because the physical nature of electromagnetic interactions differ significantly at different length scales. At low frequencies, it is difficult to simultaneously resolve the quasi electrostatic and magnetostatic behaviors of dynamic fields; this is because some of the essential contributions to the fields are overwhelmed by other essential contributions. However, at higher frequencies, such differences disappear. The result is that specialized methods used in one regime (e.g., low-frequency) tend to underperform in other regimes. The CEM Laboratory at the University of Kentucky has recently made significant progress in developing a practical strategy for overcoming such difficulties. The group has developed a framework for formulating CEM problems that provides well-conditioned, stable linear systems for modeling radiation and scattering from conductors. Unlike other formulations, the new methods provide accurate solutions for the electric and magnetic fields (near and far) at all frequencies for multi-scale, multiply connected structures without relying on either Helmholtz decompositions or perturbative solutions. In this new effort, we propose to extend and build on this framework to treat dielectric structures and structures with non-conformal meshes. The resulting computational tools will significantly increase modeling flexibility and generality, which will reduce the person-hours required to analyze complex systems including high-speed circuits and antennas. Such technology will be attractive to commercial and governmental organizations.