Using MBPE technique to accelerate solving the thin-wire EFIE used in numerical simulation of lightning

The antenna theory (AT) model is widely used to numerically simulate the propagation of current wave along lightning return-stroke channels and compute the radiated electromagnetic fields. In this model, the return stroke channel is considered as a vertical monopole antenna above perfectly conducting ground for which the numerical solution of the governing electric field integral equation (EFIE) in the frequency domain by the conventional method of moment (MoM) is prohibitively slow. In this paper, a model-based parameter estimation (MBPE) technique is proposed to reduce the number of frequency-domain calculation points required for the evaluation of space-time current distribution along a lightning return stroke channel. In applying this technique to a rational function model for the channel current distribution, a uniform-like sampling strategy is investigated. In order to accelerate the building of the moment impedance matrix, the reciprocal closed-form mutual impedance of sinusoidal electric dipoles and the symmetry of the model are used. The proposed technique is validated against the conventional inverse fast Fourier transform algorithm which uses a MoM solution for all frequencies within the channel base current spectrum. It is shown that considerable computation efficiency is achieved in terms of CPU time without losing accuracy.