Wavelet-based efficient simulation of electromagnetic transients in a lightning protection system

In this paper, a wavelet-based efficient simulation of electromagnetic transients in a lightning protection systems (LPS) is presented. The analysis of electromagnetic transients is carried out by employing the thin-wire electric field integral equation in frequency domain. In order to easily handle the boundary conditions of the integral equation, semiorthogonal compactly supported spline wavelets, constructed for the bounded interval [0,1], have been taken into account in expanding the unknown longitudinal currents. The integral equation is then solved by means of the Galerkin method. As a preprocessing stage, a discrete wavelet transform is used in order to efficiently compress the Fourier spectrum of the waveform, used as the current source that directly strikes the LPS. Time profiles of electromagnetic quantities are then obtained by using an inverse discrete fast Fourier transform algorithm. The model has been validated by comparing the results with computed and measured data found in technical literature. A good agreement has been found with a significant computational reduction.