ACES Conference
Conference Workshops
Workshop attendance is free for ACES conference participants
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Workshop 1: Electromagnetic Modeling with FEKO
Dr. Ulrich Jakobus and Dr. Rensheng (Ray) Sun
EM Software & Systems
Abstract:
FEKO is a leading electromagnetic (EM) analysis software suite, building on state of the art computational EM (CEM) techniques that can solve a wide range of electromagnetic problems. The FEKO solver is based on the Method of Moments (MoM) and was the first commercial code to utilize the Multilevel Fast Multipole Method (MLFMM) for the solution of electrically large problems. The MoM in FEKO has also been hybridized with the following solution techniques:
Finite Element Method (FEM)
Physical Optics (PO)
Geometrical Optics (GO), also known as shooting-and-bouncing rays (SBR)
Uniform Theory of Diffraction (UTD)
The hybridization implies that these solution techniques can be applied to different parts of the same model to optimize the solution time and results. FEKO has been successfully applied for
Antenna design,
Antenna-platform interaction studies,
EMI/EMC,
Bio-electromagnetics,
Radar scattering (RCS),
RF components,
Microstrip circuits,
RFID system design etc.
The main goal of this workshop is to introduce FEKO with an overview of various numerical techniques available. Various practical applications using FEKO (antenna design, EMC problems etc.) will also be examined. Hands on examples will be demonstrated.
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Workshop 2: Next-Generation Computing using GPUs
Dr Paul Mullowney
Principal Mathematician
Tech-X Corporation
Abstract:
In order to effectively leverage the increasingly heterogeneous, next-generation computing hardware such as GPUs, it is essential to write efficient code that maximizes the resources of these devices. Most of these devices rely on massive hardware multi-threading and data parallelism to exploit the significant memory bandwidth and floating point computing power available on these devices. In this workshop, we introduce these key concepts in the context of Nvidia CUDA programming paradigm. These lecture sessions are interlaced with programming exercises designed to give participants hands on experience with writing code for these devices. The first programming exercise will focus on writing a simple function that executes on an Nvidia GPU. This will include the concepts of memory management, data transfer, and device resource usage. The second lecture session will focus on the various memory hierarchies of GPUs. This will be followed by an exercise that focuses on achieving memory coalescence in a kernel. Memory coalescence is the first and most important optimization strategy for taking advantage of the GPU global memory bandwidth. In the latter half of the workshop, we introduce more advanced concepts such as fast shared memory banks, prefetching, and loop unrolling, as well as asynchronous memory transfers and kernel execution. Using these strategies and features allows one to fully maximize performance on a GPU. This workshop to have 4 lectures session on the order 45 minutes. This will be interlaced with 4 programming exercises that will take approximately 1 hour. We expect all participants of this workshop to have a laptop with the Nvidia CUDA 4.0 Toolkit and SDK installed and running before the start of the workshop. We will provide the source code for the programming exercises via USB stick.
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Workshop 3: Antenna design using Antenna Magus
Sam Clarke
Abstract:
Antenna Magus has developed a new approach to antenna design that has seen it established as the leading commercial antenna synthesis product in the market. Antenna Magus is a software tool that aids antenna engineers in the selection, design and modelling of antennas. The primary component of the tool is a large database of antennas. For each antenna in the database, the tool provides well researched information, design algorithms and parametric export models for some of the most popular commercial EM analysis tools.
This half day workshop will be divided into 2 parts. The first part will be an overview of the antennas, tools and features of Antenna Magus. The second part of the workshop will be a tutorial session where participants will use Antenna Magus to solve problems in antenna selection, antenna synthesis and antenna emulation for EMC simulations.
Participants should please bring a laptop on which they have administrator privileges (Windows 7 is the preferred operating system.
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Workshop 4: ELECTROMAGNETIC SIMULATION AND DESIGN USING NEWFASANT
Dr. Felipe Catedra and Dr. Eliseo Garcia.
NEWFASANT
felipe_catedra@fasant.com, eliseo_garcia@fasant.com
Abstract:
Useful techniques and features included in NEWFASANT tool will be presented. NEWFASANT is a computer tool parallelized for multiprocessors/GPUs computers that can treat metallic dielectric and magnetic material. The tool includes own developed: Graphical User Interface, full Geometrical and volumetric parallelized multilevel meshers.
Characteristic Basic Functions (CBF) are included in the Method of Moment module (MoM) for reducing computational cost for monostatic Radar Cross Section (RCS) computations. Preconditioned approach for CBFs is used for reducing the number of iterations of the iterative solver, particularly for EFIE. Hybrid CBF-subdomain approach for single excitation problems (antenna, bistatic RCS) is also included. The tool uses for simulate electrically very large problems with reduced computer memory and CPU-time a Domain Decomposition technique that combines fast ray-tracing Geometrical Optics-Physical Optics (PO) with MoM.
Fast RCS computation can be performed by a multiple bounce PO approach. An advanced ray-tracing approach using Geometrical Theory of Diffraction is available for fast analyses of antennas on board complex structures and for radio propagation at indoors and outdoors scenarios.
Analysis and design features for antenna, on board antenna, reflector and refletorarrays/transmit arrays, frequency selective surfaces, radome, planar circuits are available in order to help user to done very easily application works. RCS post processing features including range profiles, ISAR, RCS maps and moving targets are very useful for understating the RCS behavior of complex targets.
Other important features permit computation of radio wave propagation parameters: Complex Impulse Response, Power delays, different modulation performances including Code Division Modulation Access.
The workshop will be developed in five lectures with practical exercises. Participant are encouraged to bring a laptop for exercises. A free six months license of the full NEWFASANT tool will be distributed to all participants.
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