Overview of Macro Basis Function Research for Antenna Array Solvers

The use of large antenna arrays in radio-astronomy is of growing importance. Electromagnetic simulation is crucial during the design phase of such arrays. One of the preferred numerical method for antenna analysis is the integral-equation based Method of Moments (MoM). However, the MoM is computationally expensive, in terms of both memory and runtime scaling. The Macro Basis Function (MBF) technique can be used in MoM solvers to create MBFs by aggregating low-level basis functions with the aim of using fewer degrees of freedom. In this paper, two research avenues for efficient MBF solvers for array analysis are explored. Firstly, the use of Large-Domain MBFs. And secondly, using the Directional Cross Approximation (DCA) technique to rapidly compute the entries of the MBF reduced system.