By Jim Barlow
By fall the algorithms will begin flying, helping to create advanced computer
simulations in a new UI research center whose primary goal is improving
communication and radar systems for aircraft.
A team of some 40 scientists and doctoral students from the fields of mathematics,
computer science, physics and engineering will pool their knowledge at the
Center for Computational Electromagnetics.
The U.S. Department of Defense awarded $6.25 million over five years for
the center, which is located in a renovated space in the Everitt Laboratory.
Other supporters are the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval
Research, the Army Research Office, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
and private industry.
Algorithms -- a computer-driven, step-by-step problem-solving mathematical
procedure -- will be at the heart of the multidisciplinary research. Researchers
will focus on the interaction of various environments with the electromagnetic
waves generated in communication, radar and remote-sensing technologies.
The potential payoff will be better-designed aircraft, airborne communication
systems and radar, says director Weng Chew, a professor of electrical and
computer engineering. Improvements could result in the design of antennas
and computer chips, in oil-exploration technology and in the collection
and interpretation of data obtained through the remote sensing performed
by satellites.
The center's first task will be to design enhanced computer programs to
solve electromagnetic scattering equations, Chew said. Such work should
cut down the cost of computer modeling and simulation, and, in turn, reduce
laboratory costs.
"The Department of Defense is interested in replacing many field and
laboratory experiments, especially those that require experimental aircraft,
with computer simulations," Chew said. "You can change an aircraft's
design and do a lot more things on a computer than you can do in a lab,
and you can do these things faster and at less cost.
"We will be able to illuminate different aircraft designs with simulated
electromagnetic waves and see what the interaction will be," he said.
"Antennas have different sensitivities. The design of an antenna and
of an aircraft have to be compatible, because the materials used in their
construction can reflect signals. You want to be able to send and receive
signals effectively."
If all goes according to plan, Chew said, the center "could alter the
way computers are used in computer-aided engineering."
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