Release Notes: Altair Feko 2021.0.1

Altair Feko 2021.0.1 is available with new features, corrections and improvements. This version (2021.0.1) 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 2021.0.1 Release Notes

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

CADFEKO

Features

  • Added shunt-fed monopole and dipole antennas to the component library.
  • Added a version selector for CATIA V5 exports.

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved a problem where the edges of tetrahedra in meshes of transformed geometry parts did not align with FEM line ports.
  • Fixed an issue where running CADFEKO_BATCH on models containing cable ports caused an assertion to fail.
  • Resolved an issue with Specified points near field requests using workplanes. The workplane orientation was incorrectly applied.
  • Improved the progress feedback given during export to CATIA V5 format.

POSTFEKO

Feature

  • Added support for the visualisation of the impressed solution coefficient source.

Solver

Features

  • Improved FEM matrix and metallic loss calculation for FEM models which include lossy metallic faces.
  • Improved the accuracy of S-parameter calculations of cable models.
  • When analysing radiated emissions using a .rei file generated by the PollEx radiated emissions analysis tool for a PCB which includes dielectrics and ground planes, the radiated emissions calculated may be inaccurate. A two-step workflow using the new solution coefficient request and a new impressed solution coefficient source to achieve more accurate results is now supported. An application macro is available in CADFEKO to assist with this workflow.

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a bug that resulted in incorrect far field results, computed with the fast far field method, for an RL-GO model consisting of a multi-layer substrate.
  • Fixed a bug that may have resulted in an exception during the calculation of near field matrix elements when solving a model with segments/wires using MLFMM.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in a segmentation violation during near field computations of a large model solved with MLFMM.
  • Fixed a bug that may trigger a segmentation violation when multiple pins of a cable black box (network/circuit) are short circuited.
  • Fixed an error that may have resulted in failure during mesh vertex processing for models including planar and curvilinear triangles.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in an internal error state when solving a planar Green's function model with near field requests in multiple configurations.
  • An error message is now issued when an invalid TM mode is specified at a rectangular waveguide port.

WinProp 2021.0.1 Release Notes

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

General

Features

  • Corrected an example, C22 with TETRA, that failed during simulation.

ProMan

Features

  • ProMan now accepts finer result resolutions than before. The minimum value is scenario dependent, for example, the minimum distance between evaluation points along trajectories is 1 mm.
  • The field strength and phase values are written to the .str file with an accuracy of six decimal places.
  • Added support for extended Hata model predictions over distances smaller than 0.1 km.
  • A subset of buildings/objects to be considered during simulation can now be defined individually for each transmitter for indoor and urban scenarios in ProMan.
  • The display height chosen by the user is now saved with the project (indoor or urban). When the project is reopened, the saved display height will be used instead of a global default height.

Resolved Issues

  • The ground resolution is now used when considering scattering effects at topo triangles.
  • Improved the accuracy of predictions with the Longley-Rice model.
  • Fixed a crash in auto-calibration with the Motley-Keenan model.
  • Resolved the issue that user-defined text could not be added to legends.

WallMan

Features

  • Added support for choosing default building heights when converting an OpenStreetMap database to the WinProp urban format.

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a bug that led to a format error when an indoor database (.idb) is imported into an outdoor database (.odb).
  • Marker points, saved in a database, can now be deleted in WallMan.
  • Removed the building/wall type Evaluation Area (Vector Mask) since it's essentially a duplicate of other available wall types, namely Graphical Wall for indoor and Virtual Building for urban scenarios.

Application Programming Interface

Features

  • A subset of buildings to be considered during simulation can now be defined for indoor and urban scenarios using the WinProp API.
  • Added support to the API for network planning calculations in point mode.
  • Added support for predictions with the parabolic equations model using the WinProp API.

newFASANT 2021.0.1 Release Notes

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

General

Feature

  • Added support to read in directions (theta/phi angles) from a text file to the newFASANT PO module to allow for RCS computations in arbitrary directions.

GUI

Resolved Issue

  • Corrected errors in the reflectarray feature of the newFASANT MOM module that may have resulted in the creation of incorrect reflectarray layouts and errors during simulation.

Solver

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a bug that resulted in some directions not being computed during a parallel bistatic RCS solution of a PO model.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in a simulation error when a trim operation is performed between two surfaces in the PO module.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in inaccurate results when solving a periodic cell element excited by a plane wave with oblique incidence.
  • Fixed a bug that affects only certain observation points when the wedge diffraction is computed with the GTD or GTD-PO module.
  • Improved the accuracy of the RCS results in some cases when using the PO solver (newFASANT GTD-PO module)