Release Notes: Altair Feko 2020.1.1

Altair Feko 2020.1.1 is available with new features, corrections and improvements. This version (2020.1.1) is a patch release that should be applied to an existing 2020 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 2020.1.1 Release Notes

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

CADFEKO

Feature

  • Extended the Optenni Lab plugin with an option to include additional far field data for each active port.

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an issue with the Inverted-F - planar (PIFA) antenna in the component library. For the FEM variant of this antenna, the solution method of the airbox around the antenna was not set to the finite element method (FEM).
  • Resolved an issue where the Optenni Lab plugin failed to connect the matching network if the model contains a characteristic mode configuration.
  • Resolved an issue where the Optenni Lab plugin failed to detect the Optenni Lab installation. It now detects the Optenni Lab installation whether it is installed for all users or for the current user only.

POSTFEKO

Features

  • POSTFEKO now supports the reading of Feko file format 8. The far field format is extended in version 8 to optionally include efficiency in the solution block header.
  • Extended the parameter sweep script with additional error checking to indicate which parameter sweep run is faulty when it fails to combine results.

Resolved Issues

  • Improved the error messages that get triggered when importing far fields from a .ffe file that does not adhere to the required format, for example, if the file lacks the required column headings or contains additional header blocks.
  • Improved performance and reduced peak memory usage for the FarField GetDataSet method.

Solver

Features

  • Metallic FEM tetrahedra are no longer considered during mesh element size checks since they do not contribute to the solution.
  • Added support for antenna efficiency consideration when computing quantities associated with a receiving antenna.

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a bug that caused an allocation error during the geometry processing phase of a model with a large number of tetrahedra.
  • Fixed a bug that caused a segmentation violation when too many samples were required in ADAPTFEKO.
  • Improved the accuracy of RL-GO simulations that include diffraction effects.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in a crash upon program exit when solving some RL-GO models with the GPU on Linux.

Support Components

Features

  • Antenna efficiency is now exported to the .ffe file.
  • The version numbers for newFASANT and WinPropCLI are included on the Feko GUI update utility (Installed versions tab).
  • Added a how-to in the Feko User Guide that presents the workflow on how to connect an antenna designed in CADFEKO to a mesh that was generated with Altair HyperMesh.

WinProp 2020.1.1 Release Notes

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

General

Feature

  • Significantly expanded the information in the User Guide on the inclusion of mobile-station antennas, including options for MIMO arrays.

ProMan

Features

  • The MIMO condition number is now accessible for display from the result tree in ProMan.
  • Updated the settings of the Mobile Station (RunMS options).
  • Accelerated predictions using the SRT model. Speed-up factors of more than 2x are achievable when two or more interactions are considered in the model.
  • Added support for the Extended Hata propagation model for frequencies from 2000 MHz up to 3000 MHz.
  • A subset of buildings to be considered during simulation can now be defined for indoor and urban scenarios in ProMan.
  • Added the capability to import also antenna efficiency from Feko antenna-pattern files (.ffe).

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an issue where, in Standard Ray Tracing, the direct line-of-sight ray could be computed with the path-loss exponent that had been defined for the non-line-of-sight rays.
  • Fixed a bug that led to a crash during mobile station post-processing of a MIMO project when many rays per pixel were requested.
  • Fixed a bug that led to an error in trajectory mode when the values for distance between evaluation points and for resolution are very small.
  • Fixed an error in RunNET if the antenna gains of the MIMO antenna elements on the transmit side differ by more than 0.1 dB.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented displaying the propagation results in 3D view for a project with many time steps.
  • Fixed a bug which arose from ignoring the mismatch between UTM zones of databases of an urban model that includes topography data. An error message is now issued and the simulation is halted for such cases.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in a crash when cancelling a multi-threaded simulation of a project consisting of components such as transceivers.
  • Fixed a bug which resulted in sub-divisions of walls of a time-variant object not moving along with the object when viewing results of different time steps in ProMan.
  • The height correction factor is now considered in the Hata model for open and suburban areas.

WallMan

Feature

  • Modified color assignment during geometry conversion. If an object was white in the original tool, it will not be white in WallMan, so that it will be visible against the white background.

Application Programming Interface

Features

  • Added support for parallel simulations of projects with many transmitters with WinPropCLI.
  • Added support for EMC/EMF calculations with the WinProp API.
  • Added support for simulations of projects using the ITU-R P.1411 propagation model with the WinProp API.

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a bug that resulted in no propagation results being computed in an urban scenario when the Indoor Prediction Only option is selected.
  • The transmission matrix is now written to the ASCII .str file when a project is simulated with the WinProp API
  • The assignment of a custom value to predicted pixels with invalid results is now possible in point mode with the WinProp API.
  • Fixed a bug that led to an error when setting the power backoff value for cell assignments during network planning with the WinProp API.
  • Eliminated a few implementation differences between network planning via the GUI and via the API, such as number of digits behind a decimal point or a coordinate shift by a fraction of a pixel. Also ensured that the API will cover more scenarios.
  • The licensing environment is now automatically set up when running WinPropCLI on Linux.

newFASANT 2020.1.1 Release Notes

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

GUI

Feature

  • New definition of characteristic basis functions, which allows to reduce CBFM preprocessing time.

Resolved Issue

  • Direct, scattered or total near field components can now be viewed as text file from the Show Results menu.

Solver

Features

  • New definition of characteristic basis functions, which allows to reduce CBFM preprocessing time.
  • Implemented an interpolation technique that estimates the solution when performing multi-frequency and/or multi-direction sweep analyses.
  • Improved the memory usage of CBFM with OpenMP solver.

Resolved Issue

  • Improvements have been made in the GTD-PO module to avoid possibly inaccurate results when computing monostatic RCS using the GTD method.