Release Notes: Altair Feko 2022

Altair Feko 2022 is available with new features, corrections and improvements. Altair Feko 2022 is a major release. It can be installed alongside other instances of Altair Feko.

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.

Highlights of the 2022 Release

The most notable extensions and improvements to Feko, WinProp and newFASANT in the 2022 release.

Salient Features in Feko

  • The flexibility of Feko solvers has been extended to support hybrid simulations where faceted UTD is used to solve some parts of the model and other parts are solved with the MoM. Both fully coupled and uncoupled simulations are supported, though dielectrics in the MoM region are not yet supported. Receiving antennas (defined using far field, near field or spherical modes) may also be included in the simulation. Additional optical effects as well as higher-order effects are added to the faceted UTD enabling more accurate simulations for many cases.


    Figure 1. Faceted UTD coupled with MoM used to analyse the field distributions and antenna coupling for rear-view mirror mounted communication antennas in a set of platooning trucks at different frequencies. Multiple interactions and the inclusion of higher-order effects result in more accurate calculation of coupling between certain combinations of antennas.
  • Improvements in the application of shared memory and low-level MPI optimisations in the MLFMM solution result in improved parallel efficiency (both runtime and memory) for highly distributed simulations (across multiple nodes).


    Figure 2. Simulation of the installed performance of a traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) antenna using distributed MLFMM illustrates the improvement in parallel efficiency when comparing Feko 2022 with Feko 2021.

Salient Features in WinProp

  • The calculation of Doppler shift due to movement or rotation of objects around any 3D axis has been added.


    Figure 3. Calculation of Doppler shift due to the rotation of the blades of a wind turbine.
  • Higher accuracy of solutions using the SBR (Shooting Bouncing Rays) solver is achieved by using a hybrid ray tracing approach which employs path verification from standard ray tracing.
  • When viewing radio-coverage results in a 3D view, transmitter antenna patterns can be displayed - allowing for easier visual verification and interpretation of the results.
  • The API has been extended to support the generation of 5G beam patterns as well as automation of FM-CW post processing.

Salient Features in newFASANT

  • A new workflow has been added to get accurate and fast simulation results for even more complex and realistic multi layer radomes with frequency selective surface (FSS) structures in newFASANT. The radome and FSS is first characterised in terms of reflection/transmission and is then applied as a material to the relevant surface when configuring the full radome analysis.
    Figure 4. The new workflow for accurate and fast characterisation of multi layer radomes with FSS performance based on pre-characterisation of the radome and FSS as a material.
  • The <keyword keyref="method_mom_acronym"/> module now supports the usage of the Characteristic Basis Function Method (CBFM) for non-RCS calculations.
  • Near fields calculated using Feko solvers on a Cartesian boundary in *.efe/*.hfe format may now be imported as a simulation source.

Feko 2022 Release Notes

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

CADFEKO

Features

  • Extended near field data with the option to allow using all data blocks in the specified file(s).
  • Made changes to the Solver settings dialog to support the latest faceted UTD solver extensions.
  • Upgraded the meshing library to the latest version. Improvements include more robust meshing of cable cross sections.

Resolved Issue

  • Resolved an issue with advanced solver settings not being applied correctly. Using the direct sparse solver could result in a warning being issued erroneously when running the solver.

EDITFEKO

Feature

  • Enabled the UT - Specify the UTD/RL-GO parameters card Corner and tip diffraction, Higher-order effects and Uncoupled with moment method checkboxes for Faceted UTD.

Solver

Features

  • Added support for hybridised coupled and uncoupled MoM/Faceted UTD simulations.
  • Added support for the receiving antenna with the faceted UTD solution.
  • Added support for computing corner diffraction to the faceted UTD solver.
  • Added support for multiple reflections plus one diffraction as a higher-order effect for faceted UTD.
  • The version of the MPI runtime is printed now to the .out file as well as the screen for information.
  • Upgraded to the latest Microsoft MPI version.
  • Upgraded to Intel MPI 2021 update 2.
  • Upgraded MPICH to version 4.0.1.
  • Improved memory scaling relative to the number of parallel processes used in a FEM or FEM/MoM simulation.
  • The MLFMM fast near field computation is computed in chunks where memory resources are insufficient.
  • Improved the efficiency of FEM based iterative solution.
  • RL-GO now supports edge diffraction with receiving antennas and fast far fields.
  • Improved the parsing of .rei XML files from PollEx to allow for a more compressed format where trace/via currents may be suppressed for some frequencies.
  • Improved the near and far field computation times for physical optics (PO) models.
  • Reduced the memory footprint of parallel simulations.
  • Reduced the memory footprint of the field calculation phase of parallel MLFMM solutions.
  • Improved the modal and waveguide port mode data in the .out file to report a table of the received complex mode power values for passive modes instead of the backward wave mode expansion coefficients.
  • Warning 3423 is now issued only once in standard output. Details of the affected elements are reported to the .out file.

Resolved Issues

  • Improved the robustness of the faceted UTD solver with respect to corner diffraction.
  • Improved the accuracy of the faceted UTD solver with respect to wedge and corner diffraction.
  • Improved the accuracy of faceted UTD simulations of some models where diffracted ray effects are considered.
  • Resolved an issue that led to a fatal MPI error during the matrix fill phase of a MoM solution of a model solved using Microsoft MPI as the parallelisation library. Note that Microsoft MPI Version 10.1.12498.18 or newer may be required.
  • In order to accommodate changes in MPI behaviour, the return code from the Feko solver has been revised. A return code of 0 indicates that the Feko solver terminated successfully, with the possibility of notes and warnings. A return code of 2 indicates that the Feko solver encountered an error. Previously a return code of 1 indicated that warnings were present, but this is no longer supported. This change may impact on automated launch scripts that leverage the warning return code.
  • Added support for magnetic scalar potential computations of models consisting of cuboids.
  • Improved the power calculations for sources of PCB current data.
  • Resolved warnings and slow computations while creating the interpolation table, at some frequencies, in an example with layered media.
  • Included an error check that thick coatings and shielding are not allowed on the same label.
  • Fixed a floating point exception during the calculation of irradiation coupling into a cable harness.
  • When solving large problems and employing shared memory it is possible to exceed the shared memory allocation limits for the specific system and architecture of the simulation cluster. This may result in memory errors. A note has been added to the output to indicate when this situation may arise.
  • User-defined loads, in the SPICE circuit, are now considered during wideband crosstalk calculations.
  • When using a .str file, the transfer function memory size estimation is no longer written to the .out file. This information is redundant.
  • Improved error reporting in parallel solutions including cables. In some cases, not all errors and related triangle numbers required to isolate the error may have been reported.
  • Changed the naming of .epl output files to be consistent with the naming convention of other ASCII files exported by the kernel.

Support Components

Feature

  • Adjusted the license checks for various Feko components to optimise communication with the license server.

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a bug in the parsing of field data of a Cartesian boundary from Feko Solver (.efe/.hfe) files when using all data blocks.
  • Improved the removal of temporary files with .ol and .os extensions on completion of the simulation when running ADAPTFEKO.

WinProp 2022 Release Notes

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

General

Feature

  • Added new air interface files to the examples, to cover standards 802.11af and 802.11ax, as well as several 5G bands.

Resolved Issues

  • Removed the creation of the .msu file association to WinProp to avoid conflicts with .msu files used for Microsoft system updates.
  • In the calculation of scattering at rough surfaces, ensured a smooth transition between angular ranges.

ProMan

Features

  • Added support for a hybrid SBR/SRT solver with improved accuracy over the standard SBR solver of previous releases.
  • Added support to display the antenna patterns of transmitters within the 3D view.
  • Added a column with the antenna downtilt to the list of antennas in the Site dialog.
  • Implemented a better interpolation of antenna gain patterns in simulations.
  • Implemented multi-threading for Urban Intelligent Ray Tracing (Urban IRT).
  • Added the ability to define moving groups within ProMan and via the API, in addition to the existing capability in WallMan.
  • Added support for Doppler shift due to movement and rotation in any direction and around any axis in 3D.
  • Added the ability to modify the maximum number of polygons to be considered for SRT acceleration. There is a memory trade-off and most users can keep the default.
  • Added .wst files for the IEEE 802.11ax and 802.11aj standards in the set of examples that is shipped with the installation.

Resolved Issues

  • Breakpoint effects at individual pixels along a dominant path are now correctly considered, resulting in accuracy improvements in DPM results in some regions of a database.
  • Removed the option to cancel determination of further rays if free space loss is reached as it is no longer relevant for accelerating IRT computations in urban scenarios.
  • Improved accuracy of urban scenario predictions by correctly accounting for the shifted height of transmitters above buildings.
  • Resolved an issue that resulted in vegetation loss being incorrectly considered at prediction heights well above the vegetation objects during predictions with the dominant path model.
  • Improved the accuracy of indoor IRT simulations by robustly handling duplicate rays.
  • Resolved a bug that resulted in a missing MIMO stream when a MIMO site is defined using the Set site option.
  • Improved accuracy of rural propagation by switching from single to double precision storage of some critical parameters.
  • Implemented the calculation of Doppler shift for transmitters and prediction points moving along trajectories in otherwise-stationary geometries.
  • Fixed a slight difference in indoor DPM results between regular indoor and hybrid urban/indoor models by avoiding a small pixel offset in the latter scenario.
  • Corrected the calculation of the breakpoint distance in urban scenarios when the prediction height is specified as absolute height above sea level instead of above ground.
  • Fixed a situation in urban scenarios with topography where the determination that a result pixel is inside a building might be incorrect.
  • Resolved a crash in a CNP project, solved with IRT, with the transmitter located inside the indoor database.
  • Consolidated ray tracing acceleration options between SBR and SRT.

WallMan

Features

  • Added support for conversion of several 3D file formats: Autodesk .3ds and .fbx, COLLADA .dae, GL Transmission .gltf and .glb, Blender .blend.
  • Added support for database export in the NASTRAN file format.

AMan

Feature

  • Improved antenna-pattern generation in AMan, GUI and API, both for single beams and for 5G patterns.

Resolved Issue

  • Improved the dipole antenna pattern that is shipped with the examples.

Application Programming Interface

Features

  • Added support for predictions on building surfaces with the API.
  • Added API functions to export geometry data to binary formats.
  • Added a function, WinProp_Net_Project_Open_WST, to the network planning API, that reads and generates air interface parameters from a wireless standard file (.wst file).
  • Added support for Components to the API.
  • Added the ability to define moving groups within ProMan and via the API, in addition to the existing capability in WallMan.
  • Added support for FMCW radar post processing to the API.
  • Added support for preprocessing of time-variant databases with the API.
  • Added support for preprocessing of CNP databases with the API.
  • Added support for mobile station post-processing and network planning for prediction planes in the WinPropCLI.
  • Added support for post-processing, using RunMS, in WinPropCLI.
  • Added support for optionally generating a database in ASCII format during database conversion.

newFASANT 2022 Release Notes

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

General

Feature

  • Usage of the CBFM in the MoM module is now supported for non-RCS simulations.

Solver

Resolved Issue

  • Resolved a segmentation fault in the Ultrasound module where a crash occurs when a surface is defined for four equal points.