Release Notes: Altair Feko 2019.3.2

Altair Feko 2019.3.2 is available with new features, corrections and improvements. This version (2019.3.2) is a patch release that should be applied to an existing 2019 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.

Feko 2019.3.2 Release Notes

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

CADFEKO

Features

  • Extended the CADFEKO API with the following method and properties:
    • Added the GetRequestPointsAsCartesian method to the NearField object. This method returns a table of the request points converted to Cartesian coordinates. It applies to near field requests with the DefinitionMethod set to Cartesian, Conical, Cylindrical, CylindricalX, CylindricalY or Spherical.
    • Added the SurroundingMedium property to the Edge object. This property retrieves the surrounding medium of a wire. It only applies to free edges (wires).
    • Added the Length property to the MeshCurvilinearSegmentWire, MeshSegmentWire and Edge objects. This property retrieves the total length of a wire or an edge.
  • Extended export to I-DEAS universal format (.unv file) to include wire segment medium information and voltage sources on wire ports.

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a regression in CADFEKO 2019.3 where cancelling CEM validation resulted in a crash. CEM validation cannot be cancelled.
  • Resolved a problem, on Linux, that caused the application to become unresponsive when launching the Feko Solver from CADFEKO after creating a voxel mesh.
  • Resolved the problem that the position property of a cable connector could not be accessed from the Lua API following KBL import.
  • Resolved a problem with the Create connector dialog not always detecting the creation of new variables.
  • Removed the Sample on edges option from the Request near fields dialog for near field requests using the Cartesian boundary definition method. All Cartesian boundary near field requests are now sampled on edges.
  • The Default wire radius can now be set on the Import mesh dialog (Advanced tab) when importing a mesh in I-DEAS universal format (.unv file).

POSTFEKO

Resolved Issues

  • Improved loading performance for models containing a large number of far field receiving antennas.
  • Resolved an issue that was introduced in POSTFEKO 2019.2 that prevented the 3D view rendering of near field samples representing a line (single varying axis). Rendering of surfaces was not affected.
  • Introduced an error message when attempting to plot an invalid Cartesian boundary near field on a 3D view. This prevents an assertion failing with the message src/common_MessageWindowDialogLogger.cpp (155): Assertion failed: pMessage when plotting the results of a partially requested Cartesian boundary near field.
  • Improved rendering of both near field receiving antennas and equivalent sources when models are specified in non-SI units.

Solver

Resolved Issues

  • Improved the memory efficiency of the shared memory (OpenMP) parallel ACA solver by avoiding unnecessary memory allocations.
  • Fixed a bug in the RL-GO solution that caused inaccuracies in the edge or wedge detection phase for certain models with thin elongated curvilinear triangles. The inaccuracies were caused by considering diffraction effects at specific incident angles.
  • Fixed a bug when reporting the storage requirements of a large FEM matrix with the number of non-zeros exceeding the 4-Byte integer limit.
  • Fixed a bug that could have resulted in a non-unique SPICE voltage device name when creating a zero Ohm LC load defined in series with a cable source (AK card). The non-unique SPICE device name would have resulted in an error while parsing the SPICE netlist.
  • Fixed a bug that triggered an error when a wire port is inside a MoM VEP region.
  • Improved the performance of geometry export to the NASTRAN format to scale better with the size of the mesh.
  • Fixed a bug where the Kernel exported curvilinear segments as planar segments to NASTRAN file.
  • Improved validation to provide an error when characteristic mode analysis is used in combination with shielding applied to a thin isotropic dielectric sheet or dielectric/magnetic coating.
  • Improved the robustness of a PBC solution with a plane wave excitation with respect to user-defined phase shift. Phase shift considerations are now more consistent whether the phase shift is determined automatically or defined manually.
  • Requested near field or far field samples that are located below an infinite ground plane are now written as zero in the corresponding .efe, .hfe, .ffe, .isd, .fse or SEMCAD .dat output files. Previously these samples were omitted from the output files.
  • The transformation of aperture field sources into impressed spherical modes is now done automatically depending on the sampling of the near field source. In particular, aperture field sources are transformed to spherical modes if the near field sampling is smaller than a quarter of a wavelength.
  • Corrected the handling of scale factors for aperture and radiating antenna sources (AP/AR cards) defined with irregular grid spacing.

Support Components

Feature

  • Improved PREFEKO performance by avoiding unnecessary processing.

WinProp 2019.3.2 Release Notes

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

ProMan

Features

  • The effects of earth curvature are now considered for satellite transmitters in rural scenarios.
  • The transparency of the topography can now be modified in the 3D view.

Resolved Issues

  • Improved error handling to report the problem that led to a simulation error when using the API in rural scenarios.
  • Results from a previous simulation are no longer displayed in ProMan once different settings are applied to a project.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in differences in delays and phases computed during propagation modeling and those calculated during post-processing with an omni-directional antenna at the mobile station.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in inaccurate elevation angle calculations at mobile stations in the line of sight of the transmitter for simulations of rural projects with the deterministic two ray model. Moreover, the number of significant digits, used to represent elevation angles in the .str file, is increased to improve the accuracy of radian to degree conversions.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in coherent superposition for rays not being correctly considered in urban IRT simulations.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in inaccurate elevation angle calculations at mobile stations in the line of sight of the transmitter when performing DPM simulations on models with topography.
  • For time-variant indoor scenarios with topography, the transmitter now follows the topography correctly.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in a crash when simulating a project with a .tdv database containing only topography.
  • Fixed a problem that occurred in specific cases where, after auto-calibration, there was a larger mean value when comparing prediction (using the calibrated parameters) with measurements in ProMan than reported in the calibration result dialog.
  • Fixed a bug that led to an error state when using the option to save propagation results in a separate directory per transmitter.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in incorrect phase information being written to the .str file, during post-processing with RunMS, in case of full polarimetric projects. Additionally, fixed a bug when considering phase information due to antenna offset at the mobile station.

WallMan

Resolved Issue

  • Fixed a bug that resulted in vegetation being assigned the high loss properties of default building materials when converting a .osm database to the WinProp .odb format.

Application Programming Interface

Resolved Issues

  • Improved error handling to report the problem that led to a simulation error when using the API in rural scenarios.
  • Fixed a bug that led to interactions not being computed as well as incorrect angles being written to the ray matrix when the option to write additional results is disabled during a rural scenario simulation with the API.
  • Fixed a bug that led to a crash when the number of clutter classes is not specified when loading clutter data from memory with the WinProp API.