Stochastic Characterization of Naval Aircraft Electromagnetic Vulnerability

We will develop a simulation framework aimed at statistically characterizing EMI in aircraft replete with navigation, communication, and sensing systems subject to excitation and geometric uncertainties. The framework will simulate a carefully chosen set of deterministic coupling scenarios (i.e., aircraft of known composition subject to specific excitations) optimally spanning the space of possible excitations and geometries, and compute multidimensional integrals defining the averages and variances of EMI quantities. While the idea of collecting EMI statistics by repeated simulation of deterministic coupling scenarios is not new, it only recently has become practical due to the development of (i) fast and accurate electromagnetic simulators for analyzing broadband EMI into airframes loaded with cable interconnected electronic systems, and (ii) stochastic collocation methods for efficiently evaluating multidimensional integrals. Specific choices for (i) and (ii) include the EMTOPOL hybrid time domain integral equation framework, and weighted Stroud-2 and -3 multidimensional integrators. The proposed framework is anticipated to permit the statistical characterization of EMI in realistically modeled airframes up to 3 GHz in Phase I and 17 GHz in Phase II. We believe the framework ingredients proposed here present the best opportunity to date to yield satisfactorily accurate EMI statistics on readily available parallel computer platforms.