Reversible Parallel Discrete Event Formulation of a TLM-based Radio Signal Propagation Model

Abstract

Radio signal strength estimation is essential in many applications, including the design of military radio communications and industrial wireless installations. For scenarios with large or richly-featured geographical volumes, parallel processing is required to meet the memory and computation time demands. Here, we present a scalable and efficient parallel execution of the sequential model for radio signal propagation recently developed by Nutaro et al. Starting with that model, we (a) provide a vector-based reformulation that has significantly lower computational overhead for event handling, (b) develop a parallel decomposition approach that is amenable to reversibility with minimal computational overheads, (c) present a framework for transparently mapping the conservative time-stepped model into an optimistic parallel discrete event execution, (d) present a new reversible method, along with its analysis and implementation, for inverting the vector-based event model to be executed in an optimistic parallel style of execution, and (e) present performance results from implementation on Cray XT platforms. We demonstrate scalability, with the largest runs tested on up to 127,500 cores of a Cray XT5, enabling simulation of larger scenarios and with faster execution than reported before on the radio propagation model. This also represents the first successful demonstration of the ability to efficiently map a conservative time-stepped model to an optimistic discrete-event execution.