Release Notes: Altair Feko 2021.0.3

Altair Feko 2021.0.3 is available with new features, corrections and improvements. This version (2021.0.3) 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 2021.0.3 Release Notes

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

CADFEKO

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a crash when saving a model containing a cable schematic with unconnected components in Feko 2021.
  • When using the HyperStudy-Feko link CADFEKO variables may not have correctly updated if the label of the variable was changed in HyperStudy. This has been fixed so that variable label renames in HyperStudy are supported.
  • Fixed an issue where the mesh size histogram (Mesh information dialog) was shifted by one bin. It could appear as if the whole histogram plot is shifted, since the left-most bar was drawn as a vertical line in some cases.
  • Improved the quadcopter platform model included in the component library to avoid mesh errors when solving at certain frequencies.
  • Fixed an error in the Generate antenna array applicationmacro which resulted in incorrect port excitations when importing excitation data from a .csv file for a custom array with more than one port.

POSTFEKO

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a regression in POSTFEKO 2021 where, after adding wire currents to a 3D view, it was not possible to turn off the currents display either by toggling the visibility or removing it from the results panel.
  • Resolved the issue that Touchstone imports were case sensitive.
  • Resolved a problem where opening models in non-interactive mode caused the screen to flash with the POSTFEKO GUI opening and quickly closing again.

Solver

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an issue that resulted in an error during per-unit length parameter calculations of some cables with thin elongated mesh elements in their cross-section.
  • When using periodic boundary conditions (PBC) with geometry that touches the infinite boundary, the incorrect detection of an open SEP region (error 38878) will be avoided.
  • When using relaxed cable load restrictions, a warning (rather than an error) will be given when signals are connected across a shield. For the combined MoM/MTL cable solution an error will still be given if the connection is across the outermost shield.
  • Fixed an out-of-bounds segmentation violation that may have occurred during the search for junction triangles when triangles attach to both sides top and bottom of an infinite metallic plate.
  • Resolved an issue that resulted in an error when determining the reference signal during the solution of a model with cables. Consistency checks for the existence of such a signal were improved.

Shared Interface Changes

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an issue where a model or session file that was opened and closed again could not be deleted from disk while the application remained open.

WinProp 2021.0.3 Release Notes

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

ProMan

Features

  • Added support for geodetic to UTM coordinate conversion during trajectory import.
  • Headers of .str ASCII output files are now aligned with corresponding values, so such files can be more easily imported into Excel.

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a license bug that occurred when solving an SRT project, with more transmitters than the maximum number of threads supported by the license, using the maximum supported number of threads.
  • Increased the maximum number of samples along a trajectory to one million.
  • Resolved an issue with IRT pre-processing when multiple buildings share the same wall.
  • Corrected the deterministic two-ray model (in the superposition of the direct and the ground-reflected ray at the observation point) to include the 180 degrees phase shift of the ground-reflected ray at the reflection point.
  • Resolved an issue with importing a .ffp file that has multiple dots in the file name.

Application Programming Interface

Features

  • Added support for OFDM network planning in point mode with the WinProp API.

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a bug that deleted the disabled sites and antennas of a project if it was simulated with the WinPropCLI.
  • Fixed a crash in case of PATTERN_MODE_2X2D for the antenna pattern.
  • Added support for .tdv databases in indoor scenarios.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in a linking error in the database conversion API sample project.