- Application of reduced order models (ROMs) to problems of electromagnetic (EM) wave scattering.

- Accurate and efficient modelling of Ultrawideband (UWB) signal propagation in indoor environments.

- Efficient numerical techniques for solving electromagnetic wave scattering problems.

 - Efficient techniques for solving electromagnetic wave scattering from complex dielectric bodies.

To see a poster on the work of Conor Brennan and his group, presented at the first Sci-Sym group meeting in January 09, please follow the link: POSTER of Conor Brennan and Coworkers 09.

Application of reduced order models (ROMs) to problems of electromagnetic (EM) wave scattering.

PhD Student: Patrick BRADLEY

Co supervised by Conor Brennan and Marissa Condon and funded by DCU Career Start Award.

Project description: Full wave models of EM wave scattering, such as the integral equation (IE) formulation, offer unsurpassed accuracy which make them attractive candidates for use in applications such as medical imaging and antenna analysis. However wide-spread use is hampered by the associated computational costs.  The ROM approach is to replace the large dense matrices associated with their solution with carefully constructed compressed matrices which capture as much of the physics of the system as possible. ROMs have been applied with considerable success to problems of circuit modelling. Application to EM wave scattering is a considerably more difficult proposition due to the non-linear nature of the dependencies.

Accurate and efficient modelling of Ultrawideband (UWB) signal propagation in indoor environments.

PhD Student: John DISKIN

Supervised by Conor Brennan, funded by IRCSET.

Project description: UWB is a promising new technology which offers extremely high bandwidths for use over short ranges. The high bandwidth means that the technology is ideal for high data rate communications, while the associated narrow time duration of the pulse renders it suitable for location and tracking purposes (such as is used in the Ubisense tracking system presently installed in several locations in DCU). John is extending an existing ray-tracing tool for modelling indoor UWB wave propagation. This popular technique involves describing the EM energy as traveling along straight line paths, or rays. EM propagation effects such as reflection, transmission and diffraction are accurately computed, as are all relevant antenna effects.

Efficient numerical techniques for solving electromagnetic wave scattering problems.

PhD Student: Marie MULLEN

Supervised by Conor Brennan, funded by IRCSET.

Full wave models of EM wave scattering, such as the integral equation (IE) formulation, offer unsurpassed accuracy but have very high associated computational costs. Marie has developed several novel rapid iterative techniques for efficiently solving the matrix equations associated with the IE formulation and has demonstrated their efficacy when applied to problems involving simple reflector antennas etc. She is presently working on extending these techniques to the problem of microstrip circuit
analysis, after which it is hoped to additionally apply the reduced order modelling techniques developed in parallel projects (such as Dr. Marissa Condon's SFI PI project) to further enhance the computational efficiency.

Efficient techniques for solving electromagnetic wave scattering from complex dielectric bodies.

PhD Student: Diana BOGUSEVSCHI, supervised by Conor Brennan.

PhDStudent: Babu BIJILAH, supervised by Marissa Condon.

Funded by SFI RFP.

Diana and Babu are working on a SFI Research Frontiers Project on efficient techniques for solving electromagnetic wave scattering from complex dielectric bodies. They are focusing on efficient iterative techniques to solve the large dense matrix equations associated with the integral equation formulation of such problems. In addition they are investigating the use of reduced order models to render more efficient the solution of a given problem for varying values of frequency, source
location, dielectric content of the scatterer etc. The possible areas of application of this work are numerous, but include propagation modelling for wireless networks, medical imaging, and TeraHertz waveguide design.