Browsing by Subject "Integral-equation methods"

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Open Access
Accelerating the multilevel fast multipole algorithm with the sparse-approximate-inverse (SAI) preconditioning
(Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 2009) Malas, T.; Gürel, Levent
With the help of the multilevel fast multipole algorithm, integral-equation methods can be used to solve real-life electromagnetics problems both accurately and efficiently. Increasing problem dimensions, on the other hand, necessitate effective parallel preconditioners with low setup costs. In this paper, we consider sparse approximate inverses generated from the sparse near-field part of the dense coefficient matrix. In particular, we analyze pattern selection strategies that can make efficient use of the block structure of the near-field matrix, and we propose a load-balancing method to obtain high scalability during the setup. We also present some implementation details, which reduce the computational cost of the setup phase. In conclusion, for the open-surface problems that are modeled by the electric-field integral equation, we have been able to solve ill-conditioned linear systems involving millions of unknowns with moderate computational requirements. For closed surface problems that can be modeled by the combined-field integral equation, we reduce the solution times significantly compared to the commonly used block-diagonal preconditioner.
Open Access
Schur complement preconditioners for surface integral-equation formulations of dielectric problems solved with the multilevel fast multipole algorithm
(Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 2011-10-04) Malas, Tahir; Gürel, Levent
Surface integral-equation methods accelerated with the multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA) provide a suitable mechanism for electromagnetic analysis of real-life dielectric problems. Unlike the perfect-electric-conductor case, discretizations of surface formulations of dielectric problems yield 2 × 2 partitioned linear systems. Among various surface formulations, the combined tangential formulation (CTF) is the closest to the category of first-kind integral equations, and hence it yields the most accurate results, particularly when the dielectric constant is high and/or the dielectric problem involves sharp edges and corners. However, matrix equations of CTF are highly ill-conditioned, and their iterative solutions require powerful preconditioners for convergence. Second-kind surface integral-equation formulations yield better conditioned systems, but their conditionings significantly degrade when real-life problems include high dielectric constants. In this paper, for the first time in the context of surface integral-equation methods of dielectric objects, we propose Schur complement preconditioners to increase their robustness and efficiency. First, we approximate the dense system matrix by a sparse near-field matrix, which is formed naturally by MLFMA. The Schur complement preconditioning requires approximate solutions of systems involving the (1,1) partition and the Schur complement. We approximate the inverse of the (1,1) partition with a sparse approximate inverse (SAI) based on the Frobenius norm minimization. For the Schur complement, we first approximate it via incomplete sparse matrix-matrix multiplications, and then we generate its approximate inverse with the same SAI technique. Numerical experiments on sphere, lens, and photonic crystal problems demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed preconditioners. In particular, the results for the photonic crystal problem, which has both surface singularity and a high dielectric constant, shows that accurate CTF solutions for such problems can be obtained even faster than with second-kind integral equation formulations, with the acceleration provided by the proposed Schur complement preconditioners.