A Ternary Parallelization Approach of MLFMA for Solving Electromagnetic Scattering Problems with over 10 Billion Unknowns

In this paper, we present a flexible and efficient ternary parallelization approach for the multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA) for the solution of extremely large 3-D scattering problems with over 10 billion unknowns. In the ternary parallelization approach, a binary clustering tree of all the message passing interface (MPI) processes is built first. Then, the MLFMA tree is categorized into plane wave partitioning, hierarchical-structure partitioning, and box partitioning (BP) levels via a top-down approach to match the process clustering tree. Compared with the bottom-up approach, interprocess communications in the far interaction are reduced. An inner-group transition level is designed for switching partitions on the intermediate level between the hierarchical-structure partitioning and BP levels. The ternary strategy can realize as high parallel efficiency as the hierarchical partitioning strategy while maintaining flexibility in selecting the total number of processes. An auxiliary-tree-based parallel mesh refinement technique and a hybrid octree storage strategy are designed to facilitate the realization of fast full-wave simulation on a scale of over 10 billion unknowns with the ternary MLFMA. The accuracy of the solutions is validated by comparing the radar cross sections (RCSs) of a sphere of diameter 3042 wavelengths with 10 773 415 728 unknowns via the MLFMA and the Mie series, which is the largest number of unknowns to be computed via full wave numerical methods to date. Furthermore, the solutions for complicated objects, namely a ship and an aircraft model, both of which have maximum lengths that exceed 10 000 wavelengths and over 10 billion unknowns, are presented.