Dr Francesca Vipiana, Politecnico di Torino, Italy

Efficient and accurate analysis of real-life multi-scale antenna problems via integral equations

Biography

Francesca Vipiana is an Associate Professor of electromagnetic fields at the Dept. of Electronics and Telecommunications, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy. Her current research interests include numerical techniques based on integral equations and method of moment approaches, with a focus on multiresolution and hierarchical schemes, domain decomposition, preconditioning and fast solution methods, Green’s function regularisation, and advanced quadrature integration schemes.

Prof Vipiana received the Young Scientist Award at the URSI General Assembly in 2005, the Best Poster Award at the 1st IEEE Women in Electromagnetics Workshop in 2009, and the Lot Shafai Mid-Career Distinguished Award at the IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation in 2017.

Synopsis

In the last years, the electromagnetic (EM) problems have scaled up in complexity and size: the EM simulations are attempted of the entire system, and the use of simulation tools has been explored as a way to reduce the cost of certifying complex platforms.

This talk will address the efficient and accurate analysis of real-life multi-scale antenna problems via the moment method (MoM) solutions of surface integral equations (SIEs). SIEs have emerged as the dominant technology for the EM modeling of antenna placement on large and complex platforms such as aircrafts, ships, satellite, and vehicles.

In the analysis of multi-scale structures that are electrically large, but with geometrical details much smaller than the working wavelength, the solution has multiple scales of variation; this generates ill-conditioning in the associated linear system that heavily impacts on accuracy and solution cost.  The key idea is to keep different scales of variation directly in the basis functions that discretize the problem. Moreover, efficiently and accurately evaluating the singular or near-singular double surface integrals is fundamental to moment method solutions of surface integral equations.

Hence, two key issues, crucial in the analysis of multi-scale structures, will be investigated: devising discretisation schemes insensitive of wide scale ranges and effective, accurate integration schemes for computing the SIE-MoM system matrix.