How to accelerate the raytrace algorithm using gpu or other methods?

I had the city scenario loaded using siteviewer and defined tx,rx and propagation model rtmp as the example documentation said. The raytrace algorithms in the program takes tens of seconds or even hundreds of seconds. How should I accelerate these algorithm? Can it be done with gpu?

[添傲 陈]

In propagationModel, I have set MaxNumDiffractions to 0. This greatly increases the speed of the algorithm, but it is not enough.

Answer 1

[Pratyush]

Hi @添傲 陈,

I understand that you want to speedup the processing time of the 'raytrace' function. As of now GPU acceleration of the 'raytrace' function is not currently supported. However parallel computing toolbox may be used to speedup the entire processing. The example given on the document: raytrace example could be refactored in the below manner to speed up the rendering.

% Enable parallel computing and create a parallel pool
parpool();

% Create siteviewer and transmitter objects
viewer = siteviewer("Buildings","chicago.osm");
tx = txsite("Latitude",41.8800,"Longitude",-87.6295, ...
    "TransmitterFrequency",2.5e9);
show(tx)

% Create receiver object
rx = rxsite("Latitude",41.8813452,"Longitude",-87.629771, ...
    "AntennaHeight",30);
show(rx)

% Parallelize the ray tracing computations using parfor
numRays = 1000; % Number of rays to trace
results = cell(numRays, 1); % Preallocate a cell array to store results

parfor i = 1:numRays
    % Perform ray tracing for each ray
    results{i} = raytrace(tx, rx);
end

% Process the results as needed
% ...

% Delete the parallel pool
delete(gcp);

MATLAB supports parallel computing using the Parallel Computing Toolbox. By distributing the workload across multiple cores or machines, you can significantly speed up the ray tracing process. You can use functions like 'parfor' or 'spmd' to parallelize the computations. Refer to the following documentation to know more about parallel computing toolbox: Get Started with Parallel Computing Toolbox - MathWorks India

[添傲 陈]

Thanks for your wonderful answer!

[Stavros Tsimpoukis]

Hello, I'd like to ask some questions concerning this answer. When calling each time, in the parfor loop, the raytrace function shouldn't that return the whole comm.Ray cell array, instead of a single comm.Ray ?

Moreover, let's suppose that we have an array of rxsites and we would like to parallelize the process of ray computing for each individual rxsite. Would it be possible to use a parfor to do that ?