The solution of large EFIE problems via preconditioned multilevel fast multipole algorithm

Abstract

We propose an effective preconditioning scheme for the iterative solution of the systems formulated by the electric- field integral equation (EFIE). EFIE is notorious for producing difficult-to-solve systems. Especially, if the target is complex and the utilized frequency is high, it becomes a challenge to solve these dense systems with even robust solvers such as full GMRES. For this purpose, we use an inner-outer solver scheme and use an approximate multilevel fast multipole algorithm for the inner solver to provide a very efficient approximation to the dense linear system matrix. We explore approximation level and inner-solver accuracy to optimize the efficiency of the inner-outer solution scheme. We report the solution of large EFIE systems of several targets to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.