A Comparative Study of the Computation Efficiency of a GPU-Based Ray Launching Algorithm for UAV-Assisted Wireless Communications
Keywords:
5G, Air-To-Ground (A2G) propagation, GPU, NVIDIA, ray launching, UAVAbstract
Graphics Processing Units (GPU), have opened up new opportunities for speeding up generalpurpose parallel computing applications. In this paper, we present the computation efficiency in terms of time performances of a novel ray launching field prediction algorithm which relies on NVIDIA GPUs and its Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). The software tool assesses the propagation losses between a wireless transmitter - carried by an Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) - over a 3D urban environment. Together with other effective features, the software tool is shown to reduce by several orders of magnitude the computation time of simulations. Performances and cost-benefit analysis of three different NVIDIA GPU configurations are thus investigated over three different urban scenarios, taken as test-cases for Air-to-Ground (A2G) communications for 5G applications and beyond.
Downloads
References
Z. Yun, M. F. Iskander, “Ray tracing for radio propagation modelling: Principles and applications,” IEEE Access, vol. 3, pp. 1089-1100, July 2015.
N. Kinayman, “Parallel programming with GPUs: Parallel programming using graphics processing units with numerical examples for microwave engineering,” IEEE Microwave Magazine, vol. 14, ARPAIO, VITUCCI, FUSCHINI: GPU-BASED RAY LAUNCHING ALGORITHM 1460 iss. 4, pp. 102-115, June 2013.
J. D. Owens, D. Luebke, N. Govindaraju, M. Harris, J. Kruger, A. E. Lefohn, and T. J. Purcell, “A survey of general-purpose computation on graphics hardware,” Proc. Eur. Assoc. Comput. Graph., pp. 21-51, Aug. 2005.
A. Hidic, D. Zubanovic, A. Hajdarevic, A. Huseinovic, and N. Nosovic, “Attempt of unbiased comparison of GPU and CPU performance in common scientific computing,” 2012 IX International Symposium on Telecommunications (BIHTEL), Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Oct. 25-27, 2012.
S. W. Keckler, W. J. Dally, B. Khailany, M. Garland, and D. Glasco, “GPUs and the future of parallel computing,” IEEE Micro., vol. 31, iss. 5, Sept.-Oct. 2011.
US Dept. of Transportation. “Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Service Demand 2015-2035: Literature Review and Projections of Future Usage,” Technical Report, v. 1.0, Feb. 2014.
J. S. Lu, E. M. Vitucci, V. Degli-Esposti, F. Fuschini, M. Barbiroli, J. A. Blaha, and H. L. Bertoni, “A discrete environment-driven GPUbased ray launching algorithm,” IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 67, iss. 2, pp. 1180-1192, Feb. 2019.
E. M. Vitucci, V. Degli-Esposti, F. Fuschini, J. S. Lu, M. Barbiroli, J. N. Wu, M. Zoli, J. J. Zhu, and H. L. Bertoni, “Ray tracing RF field prediction: An unforgiving validation,” International Journal of Antennas and Propagation, Hindawi, vol. 2015, pp. 1-11, Aug. 2015.
NVIDIA Corporation Whitepaper, “NVIDIA’s Next Generation, CUDA Compute Architecture: Kepler GK110/210 Family,” 2012.
NVIDIA Corporation Whitepaper, “NVIDIA’s Next Generation, CUDA Compute Architecture: Pascal GP100 Family,” 2017.
NVIDIA Corporation Whitepaper, “NVIDIA’s NVIDIA Turing GPU Architecture: Graphics Reinvented,” 2019.
The MathWorks, Inc., “Matlab 2017B User Guide: On-line Help,” referenced resources, 2016.
NVIDIA Corporation, Developer’s zone, “NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit 10.2.89: CUDA Toolkit Documentation,” Nov. 2019.
N. Matloff, “Parallel Computing for Data Science: With Examples in R, C++ and CUDA,” June 4, 2015 Chapman and Hall/CRC Pub., June 2015.
C. Reaño and F. Silla, “Performance evaluation of the NVIDIA Pascal GPU architecture: Early experiences,” 2016 IEEE 18th International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communications, Sydney, Australia, Dec. 12-14, 2016.
Z. Dai and R. J. Watson, “Accelerating a ray launching model using GPU with CUDA,” 12th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2018), London, UK, Apr. 9-13, 2018.
M. Ujaldon, “Using GPUs for accelerating electromagnetic simulations,” Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society Journal, vol. 25, no. 4, 2010.