Title: Speeding up NEC electromagnetic simulation using GPU technology for antenna design problems

Authors: Wei Zhang; Sanyou Zeng; Zhu Liu; Yaqiong Peng; Feifei Zhang; Jingxiang Chen

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences, Lumo Road 388, Wuhan, Hubei, 430074, China ' Department of Computer Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences, Lumo Road 388, Wuhan, Hubei, 430074, China ' Department of Computer Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences, Lumo Road 388, Wuhan, Hubei, 430074, China ' Department of Computer Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences, Lumo Road 388, Wuhan, Hubei, 430074, China ' Department of Computer Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences, Lumo Road 388, Wuhan, Hubei, 430074, China ' Department of Computer Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences, Lumo Road 388, Wuhan, Hubei, 430074, China

Abstract: Graphics processing units (GPUs) have increasingly become an attractive alternative to central processing unit (CPU) for some of compute-intensive and parallel tasks. This paper presents application of GPU technology to speed up numerical electromagnetic code (NEC) electromagnetic simulation. Then the GPU-NEC was used to evolve antenna. In comparison of the CPU computing, the relative error of the GPU computing shows in the range of allowable. The best result of GPU computing successfully obtains a speedup of nearly seven times compare to without GPU computing. In application of the GPU-NEC in evolving antenna the acceleration about seven times as well.

Keywords: graphics processing units; GPUs; antenna design; evolutionary algorithms; numerical electromagnetic code; NEC; electromagnetic simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCSM.2013.058061

International Journal of Computing Science and Mathematics, 2013 Vol.4 No.4, pp.374 - 381

Received: 10 May 2013
Accepted: 07 Jul 2013

Published online: 10 May 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article