CAREER: EleXIR: A Top-Down Approach to Research and Learning in Efficient Hierarchical Electromagnetic Simulation Methods for Complex Structures and Systems

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

0093102 Jandhyala Computational electromagnetics (CEM) is a diverse field that sees several new applications each year. Owing to advances in computational algorithms and hardware, it has become feasible to analyze progressively more complex electromagnetic (EM) problems. Indeed, the development of future generations of computers will itself be heavily dependent on the availability of efficient, integrated CEM tools for chips and interconnects. With the enhanced global emphasis on high-speed systems of unparalleled complexity, it is evident that EM effects are becoming increasingly dominant. Wireless networks are expanding at a dramatic rate in the United States and in several parts of the world. High-speed systems-on-chip are now the focal points in myriad commercial, defense, and research areas. Several critical current and future domains with unprecedented potential including the next-generation internet, battlefield communications and intelligence, and large-scale distributed computing do or will rely on complex wireless networks and systems-on-chip. These areas will have a massive impact on the increasingly information-based economy and defense of the United States, and on the global high-technology economy of the future. The design and development needs of these complex systems and structures have led to a critical requirement for accurate, hierarchical EM analyses. These simulations are necessitated in order to develop new designs and paradigms, and to save on the exorbitant costs and time requirements of iterated physical prototyping and testing. The sheer complexity of the simulations is such that the possibility of achieving even moderately accurate results with reasonable computing resources and time did not exist until recently. While evolutionary advances in CEM are omnipresent, the Electromagnetic-Simulation: Instruction and Research (EleXIR) approach in this proposal presents paradigm-shifting, physics-based, revolutionary CEM methodologies that exhibit the potential to render feasible, over the next few years, the accurate, efficient, and integrated EM simulation of large-scale structures and systems. These approaches will lead to the development of advanced tools with the ability to perform rigorous and automated three-dimensional full-wave EM simulation with the ease and transparency of present-day circuit-level modeling. The resulting advances will have a strong potential to affect several simulation aspects of present and future EM applications, including wireless-based network and system-on-chip issues, such as: Propagation through random media and scattering from rough surfaces Signal integrity analysis for high-speed radio-frequency circuits and systems-on-chip Computation of radar cross sections of complex targets Design and analysis of novel antenna arrays Analysis of modem electromechanical, optical, and quantum devices These applications, while not being exhaustive, are extensive and varied. To address these, a unified class-oriented approach is proposed that relies on physics-based, redundancy-extracting approaches to hierarchical integral-equation modeling of EM problems. A combination of efficient integral equation formulations, fast algorithms tuned to the physics of specific classes of problems, and hierarchical and reduced-order modeling schemes, is the paradigm presented here for the development of revolutionary new CEM tools for several system-on-chip and wireless-related EM applications over the next few years. Along with the advances in such techniques comes the necessity and challenge of creating a pool of talent with the critical mass necessary for sustainable research and development in these high-technology areas, which will be addressed through new integrated curricula incorporating new CEM methods in a top-down manner in areas of interest i.e. classical EM, high-speed circuits, wireless communications, and devices. These crucial requirements in research, instruction, and technology-transfer that are of strategic importance to the United States and to global economics form the focus of the EleXIR approach proposed here. The general goals of EleXIR include the development, teaching, and technology transfer of seamless topdown approaches to modem CEM in high-technology areas where it is necessitated, or will be necessitated in the near future, including wireless and high-speed circuit applications. ***