Release Notes: Altair Feko 2021.2.4

Altair Feko 2021.2.4 is available with new features, corrections and improvements. This version (2021.2.4) is a patch release that should be applied to an existing 2021 installation.

Feko is a powerful and comprehensive 3D simulation package intended for the analysis of a wide range of electromagnetic radiation and scattering problems. Applications include antenna design, antenna placement, microstrip antennas and circuits, dielectric media, scattering analysis, electromagnetic compatibility studies including cable harness modelling and many more.

WinProp is the most complete suite of tools in the domain of wireless propagation and radio network planning. With applications ranging from satellite to terrestrial, from rural via urban to indoor radio links, WinProp’s innovative wave propagation models combine accuracy with short computation times.

newFASANT complements Altair’s high frequency electromagnetic software tool (Altair Feko) for general 3D EM field calculations, including, among others, special design tools tailored for specific applications like complex radomes including FSS, automated design of reflectarrays and ultra-conformed reflector antennas, analysis of Doppler effects, ultrasound systems including automotive or complex RCS, and antenna placement problems. Advanced solver technologies like the MoM combined with the characteristic basis functions (CBFS), PO/GO/PTD, GTD/PO and MLFMM parallelised through MPI/OpenMP, being some of them especially efficient for the analysis of electrically very large problems.

Feko 2021.2.4 Release Notes

The most notable extensions and improvements to Feko are listed by component.

CADFEKO

Feature

  • The skin depth calculator included in the POSTFEKO application macro library is now also available in CADFEKO.

POSTFEKO

Resolved Issue

  • Corrected the mesh triangle IDs displayed on annotations in the 3D view for elements using the faceted UTD solution method.

Solver

Feature

  • The memory footprint for models using MLFMM with localised multiple dielectric regions has been reduced.

Resolved Issues

  • Improved the accuracy of MoM/RL-GO simulations of models with waveguide ports.
  • Resolved a bug that resulted in Feko hanging if an internal error is issued during the iterative solution phase of a parallel MLFMM simulation of some models.
  • Resolved a floating point error during the iterative solution phase of a parallel MLFMM solution. The occurrence of this floating point error was hardware dependent.
  • Resolved an issue that led to incorrect results when solving a model, with multiple media junctions, with the uncoupled domain Green's function method.
  • Resolved an issue that resulted in passivity violations in S-parameter results of a coupled radiation and irradiation MTL solution of a model consisting of cables.
  • Reverted simplifications in the calculation of quantities related to cable harness, introduced in the 2021 version, and improved the robustness of combined MoM/MTL solutions.
  • Resolved an issue that resulted in the shield transfer impedance being incorrectly set to zero when only a single frequency point is defined in a model consisting of a shielded cable.
  • Improved the robustness of cable path intersection checks during the solution of models with cable harnesses.
  • Resolved a slowdown while creating the interpolation table in an example with layered media.
  • The MLFMM fast near field computation is computed in chunks where memory resources are insufficient.
  • Improved calculation of transmission coefficients for some simulation using periodic boundary conditions (PBC).

Shared Interface Changes

Resolved Issue

  • Resolved a crash in CADFEKO and POSTFEKO when calling the Close method on the Application object via automation.

Support Components

Features

  • Added an application macro to iteratively apply adaptive mesh refinements based on error estimates to assist in achieving a refined mesh.
  • Added a chunk parameter to the Farm model to cluster application macro. This parameter controls how many sub models are created to farm to a cluster.

Resolved Issues

  • A warning is now issued when high-order effects are included in faceted UTD model. A parsing error was issued by previous versions of PREFEKO.
  • Fixed a problem causing the Create HyperStudy extraction script not to execute correctly.
  • Corrected the Generate Antenna Array application macro so that wire ports are not removed when using the simplify option.

WinProp 2021.2.4 Release Notes

The most notable extensions and improvements to WinProp are listed by component.

General

Resolved Issues

  • Improved the accuracy of SBR predictions by robustly accounting for all transmission effects.
  • Corrected the computation of transmitter height in the COST model for the case where topography data are used and the transmitter is on top of a building.

ProMan

Features

  • The computation of the MIMO condition numbers has been extended for higher order MIMO systems, for example, 4x4 or 8x8.
  • The transmission mode corresponding to the maximum data rate has been added to the .dda and .dua files.
  • Improved the parallel scaling of predictions of project with multiple transmitters using a large number of threads.

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a crash that occurred in trajectory mode and in point mode in time-variant projects with the transmitter moving along a trajectory.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when Generate per-stream and sub-channel power results was requested under Postprocessing incl. Tx and Rx.
  • Resolved a crash when a cable with 3 points is moved with Move Component tool.
  • Resolved an issue that prevented displaying propagation results for an Urban model with GPS satellites.
  • Corrected the unit for the resolution of prediction results when geodetic coordinates are used.
  • Reduced memory usage of multi-threaded simulations with the dominant path model.

WallMan

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an issue with IRT preprocessing of an outdoor database that leads to duplicate rays diffracted from the common wedge of two buildings.
  • Fixed an error message that could appear when drawing a correct polyline object.
  • Resolved an issue that caused a missing shape in an indoor IRT model when a database was preprocessed while the option Additionally prediction of outdoor pixels was enabled.

Application Programming Interface

Features

  • Added support for Motley-Keenan model with the WinPropCLI.
  • Added support for conversion of indoor databases to urban databases as well as conversion of urban to indoor using WinPropCLI.

newFASANT 2021.2.4 Release Notes

The most notable extensions and improvements to newFASANT are listed by component.

GUI

Feature

  • Corrected the phase information in the ray tracing output file of the US module.

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an issue that resets the rotation parameters for the Doppler calculation in the PO/GTD-PO modules.
  • Extended the newFASANT US module to add support for selection of specific effects (such as direct, reflected, diffracted, and transmitted rays) and to exclude rays that are longer than a selected distance while computing Coupling.

Solver

Feature

  • Corrected the phase information in the ray tracing output file of the US module.

Resolved Issues

  • Corrected the transmitted ray component for dielectric objects in the GTD module.
  • Resolved an issue that resets the rotation parameters for the Doppler calculation in the PO/GTD-PO modules.
  • Extended the newFASANT US module to add support for selection of specific effects (such as direct, reflected, diffracted, and transmitted rays) and to exclude rays that are longer than a selected distance while computing Coupling.
  • Resolved an issue with reading radiation pattern for coupling computation in the US module.