Vector and parallel implementations for the FDTD analysis of millimeter wave planar antennas

The 3D Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method is a powerful numerical technique for directly solving Maxwell's equations. This paper describes it s implementation on high speed computers. This technique is used here for t he analysis of millimeter wave planar antennas. In our algorithm, Berenger' s Perfectly Matched Layers (PML) are implemented as absorbing boundary cond itions to mimic free space. Dielectric and metallic losses are taken into a ccount in a recursive and dispersive formulation. We present the main techn iques implemented to optimize the non-sequential program on vector computer s. Besides, two parallel supercomputers of different architectures as well as a multi-user network of Sun workstations are used to investigate the par allel FDTD code. The performances obtained on vector/distributed memory mas sively parallel/hybrid computers show that the FDTD algorithm is ideally su ited for the implementations on both vector and parallel computers. Compari sons with experimental results in the millimeter wave frequency band valida te our codes.