A fast-multipole domain decomposition integral equation solver for characterizing electromagnetic wave propagation in mine environments

Reliable and effective wireless communication and tracking systems in mine environments are key to ensure miners' productivity and safety during routine operations and catastrophic events. The design of such systems greatly benefits from simulation tools capable of analyzing electromagnetic (EM) wave propagation in long mine tunnels and large mine galleries. Existing simulation tools for analyzing EM wave propagation in such environments employ modal decompositions (Emslie et. al., IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., 23, 192–205, 1975), ray-tracing techniques (Zhang, IEEE Tran. Vehic. Tech., 5, 1308–1314, 2003), and full wave methods. Modal approaches and ray-tracing techniques cannot accurately account for the presence of miners and their equipments, as well as wall roughness (especially when the latter is comparable to the wavelength). Full-wave methods do not suffer from such restrictions but require prohibitively large computational resources. To partially alleviate this computational burden, a 2D integral equation-based domain decomposition technique has recently been proposed (Bakir et. al., in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. APS, 1–2, 8–14 July 2012).