2004 IRISH SCIENTIST YEAR BOOK

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Dublin City University
Conor Brennan & Marissa Condon
Electromagnetic wave modelling in the School of Electronic Engineering

Scattered reflected and diffracted fields from a plane wave impinging on a metallic plate

The Dublin City University RF (Radio Frequency) modelling and simulation group is based in the School of Electronic Engineering and conducts research in the area of computational electromagnetics, a rapidly evolving research space lying at the intersection of electrical engineering, mathematics and computer science. Ever since Maxwell's Equations predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves that can move through space at the speed of light, scientists and engineers have been attempting to model the behaviour of these waves in ever more complicated environments. Their success is reflected in the explosion of progress witnessed during the 20th century in such diverse areas as telecommunications, integrated chip design, radar technology and optics. The research challenge that computational electromagnetics faces at the start of the 21st century is in finding methods to model these problems more quickly, more accurately and for increasingly more complicated environments.

Specifically, our group has significant expertise in UHF (Ultra High Frequency) wave propagation modelling for use in wireless system planning. We model such propagation using a variety of cutting-edge techniques, such as ray tracing and parabolic and integral equations. We have much experience in related problems also, such as transmitter position optimization and algorithms for locating mobile users within, for example, a wireless LAN (Local Area Network). We have also worked extensively in the area of acceleration algorithms for integral equation analysis of scattering problems such as arise in radar cross-section computation or interconnect analysis. These acceleration algorithms can reduce the computation time for such problems from hours or days to minutes or even seconds with no discernible loss in accuracy.

The illustration shows the results of one such simulation. A plane wave impinges on a metallic plate producing reflected and diffracted fields. The diagram shows these scattered fields as computed using an efficient computational technique developed by members of our group.

Our group has also worked extensively in the area of efficient time and frequency domain analysis of high frequency circuits, both linear and non-linear. The emphasis has been on reduced order modelling � the development of sophisticated algorithms that can greatly reduce the computational complexity of the analysis, thereby greatly speeding up the design and simulation of massively complicated circuits.

Contact: Dr Conor Brennan, RINCE, School of Electronic Engineering, DCU;
Tel: + 353 1 700 7649; E-mail: [email protected] ;
Dr Marissa Condon, RINCE, School of Electronic Engineering, DCU; Tel: + 353 1 700 5405; E-mail: [email protected] ;
Web: http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~rfmodsim