Multilevel fast multipole algorithm for fields

Abstract

An efficient implementation of the multilevel fast multipole algorithm is herein applied to accelerate the calculation of the electromagnetic near- and far-fields after the equivalent surface currents have been obtained. In spite of all the research efforts being drawn to the latter, the electric and/or magnetic fields (or other parameters derived from these) are ultimately the magnitudes of interest in most of the cases. Though straightforward, their calculation can be computationally demanding, and hence the importance of finding a sped-up accurate representation of the fields via a suitable setup of the method. A complete self-contained formulation for both near- and far-fields and for problems including multiple penetrable regions is shown in full detail. Through numerical examples we show that the efficiency and scalability of the implementation leads to a drastic reduction of the computation time.

Keywords:

• Numerical integral methods
• method of moments (MoM)
• multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA)
• electromagnetic optics
• radiated fields