GECEM: A portal-based Grid application for computational electromagnetics

The Grid-Enabled Computational Electromagnetics (GECEM) portal is a problem-solving environment that uses grid technologies to support scientists in accessing distributed resources for the solution of computational electromagnetics (CEM) problems. These resources include input files specifying the system geometry, and proprietary software and hardware for mesh generation and CEM simulation. Through interacting with a web-based grid portal, a user can access these resources, submit jobs, monitor and execute distributed grid applications, and collaboratively visualize the results of the CEM simulation. Thus, the portal allows users to use Grid infrastructure to share resources among geographically distributed partners in order to execute large-scale computational electromagnetics simulations, and to collaboratively analyze and visualize the results. This paper describes a secure, web-based portal, built on the GridSphere framework, composed of a number of JSR-168 compliant portlets that deploy services at the back end for discovery and management of distributed resources, and for invoking services for mesh generation and CEM simulation. The paper also describes how security is achieved through the Grid Security Infrastructure and single sign-on.