Release Notes: Altair Feko 2018.1

Salient Features

• The restrictions for cable height above ground are lifted for differentially driven cable problems. The user needs to define the orientation of any cable that does not have nearby geometry by specifying the cable's reference direction.

  
  

  

  
  Figure 1. A preview of the cable cross-section orientation of a cable running above an arbitrary ground installation.

• GPU acceleration of flat PEC RL-GO models with manual ray-launching increment settings. Acceleration of up to 40 times faster can be achieved.
• Further memory savings using shared memory technology. The savings are model and solution method dependent with the most prominent savings observed for PO. The PO solution of currents due to a dipole source on a generic aircraft discretised into 1.95 million triangles showed a memory reduction of more than 30% when using 20 cores on a single CPU.
• A new direct ACA solver that is the default for ACA. Memory savings are model dependent with some examples showing up to a 90% reduction in the memory requirement.
• FEM is supported together with MoM/MLFMM windscreen solutions and planar multilayer substrates. Utilising FEM in parts of a model where it is more applicable than the MoM may provide substantial memory and runtime improvements. A representative example of an antenna module in a car with windscreen showed a reduction in memory and runtime of 80%.

  
  

  

  
  Figure 2. Partial view of a car with a windscreen antenna solved with the MoM/MLFMM and an antenna module mounted in the car's roof (shown enlarged in the insert) solved with the FEM.

• General improvements to the interface when working with Gerber files and to Gerber file export. Arbitrary file extensions are supported for Gerber import. Gerber exports are improved to handle more complex meshed planar geometry.

  
  

  

  
  Figure 3. View of an exported Gerber file of a planar antenna with via holes.