Scalable Parallel Execution of an Event-Based Radio Signal Propagation Model for Cluttered 3D Terrains

Estimation of radio signal strength is essential in many applications, including the design of military radio communications and industrial wireless installations. While classical approaches such as finite difference methods are well-known, new event-based models of radio signal propagation have been recently shown to deliver such estimates faster (via serial execution) when compared to other methods. For scenarios with large or richly-featured geographical volumes, however, parallel processing is required to meet the memory and computation time demands. Here, we present a scalable and efficient parallel execution of a recently-developed event-based radio signal propagation model. We demonstrate its scalability to thousands of processors, with parallel speedups over 1000×. The speed and scale achieved by our parallel execution allow for larger scenarios and faster execution than has ever been reported before.