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A reflector antenna computer program based upon a simple discreet approximation of the radiation integral has proven to be extremely easy to adapt to the parallel computing architecture of the modest number of large-gain computing elements such as are used in the Intel iPSC and Touchstone Delta parallel machines.
One of the simplest reflector antenna computer programs is based upon a discrete approximation of the radiation integral. This calculation replaces the actual reflector surface with a triangular facet representation so that the reflector resembles a geodesic dome. The Physical Optics (PO) current is assumed to be constant in magnitude and phase over each facet so the radiation integral is reduced to a simple summation. This program has proven to be surprisingly robust and useful for the analysis of arbitrary reflectors, particularly when the near-field is desired and surface derivatives are not known. Because of its simplicity, the algorithm has proven to be extremely easy to adapt to the parallel computing architecture of a modest number of large-grain computing elements such as are used in the Intel iPSC and Touchstone Delta parallel machines.