Release Notes: Altair Feko 2018.0.1

Altair Feko 2018.0.1 is available with new features, corrections and improvements. This version (2018.0.1) is a patch release and it should be applied to an existing 2018 installation.

Feko 2018.0.1 Release Notes

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

POSTFEKO

Resolved Issues

  • The DerivedResults module is corrected to support phi axis ranges. Using the module to calculate results from data with phi values could have resulted in an error. This is now also fixed for Ludwig III (Co) and Ludwig III (Cross) components.
  • Improved the adaptive algorithm used to interpolate and extrapolate frequency responses during the frequency to time domain transformation in POSTFEKO.

Solver

Features

  • Improved solution time when calculating per-unit-length cable parameters for cable solutions.
  • Optimised memory usage for the fast far field calculation for discrete frequency models.

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a bug that caused the solver to hang in exceptional cases when parallel processes write CMA data to CMA files.
  • Improved the accuracy of the phase when using physical optics for models with thin dielectric sheets or coatings when the sheets/coatings become thick.
  • Fixed a bug that caused near field to spherical mode transformation to fail if the field complexity requires a high level of recursion.
  • Fixed a bug that caused an incorrect error stating that the normal vector orientation is not correct for certain windscreen antenna problems.
  • Fixed a bug that caused cable results to differ depending on the order of signal number specification.
  • Fixed a bug that caused intersecting triangle errors for certain models meshed using lower precision.
  • Improved general memory usage.
  • Allow transmission and reflection coefficients to be calculated for incident waves that are parallel to the surface of PBC structures and Green's function planes.
  • Fixed a bug that caused an internal error state when circular/coaxial waveguide ports were used together with rectangular waveguide ports.
  • Improved flushing cache files (STR/PUL) in between frequency points.
  • Fixed a bug that reported negative percentage output when using the MLFMM to calculate certain problems.
  • Improved the power loss calculation per medium for cable calculations - total losses stays unchanged.
  • Relax geometry intersection check tolerances to allow certain valid geometry.
  • Fixed a bug that could influence the performance of some SPAI preconditioned parallel iterative solution.
  • Improved error reporting for models that contain faulty triangles.
  • Improved memory usage and reporting for parallel MLFMM and MoM problems.
  • Improved time usage reporting for tracked CMA problems.
  • Fixed a bug that caused an error state for PBC examples that had edges defined on the corners of the PBC cell.
  • Improved accuracy of memory usage reporting.
  • Fixed a bug that caused an incorrect error stating that a curvilinear triangle is malformed.
  • Fixed a bug that caused Feko initialisation to abort if environment variables contain illegal characters.

Support Components

Resolved Issues

  • Support multiple frequency blocks when importing near fields (.efe/.hfe).
  • Multiple instances of the Feko + WinProp Launcher utility can be open at the same time to launch components from different installations.
  • Minor corrections to the User Guide include the correction of the file formats in the section "Defining Near Field Data from File".

WinProp 2018.0.1 Release Notes

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

General

Resolved Issues

  • Added support for floating licenses to the 2018 WinProp Student Version to bring it in line with the 2018 Feko Student Version.
  • Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented TuMan files created under Windows 10 to open under Windows 7. There was an initialisation that is done automatically on newer operating systems and not automatically on Windows 7.
  • Fixed a bug in AMan where binary files were produced that couldn't be read later.
  • Enhanced the flexibility of AMan to read antenna patterns with angles beyond 180 degrees.
  • Fixed a crash in the API that occurred when results for multiple heights were requested.

ProMan

Features

  • For simulations with empirical methods, in addition to defining a polarization for the transmitter, the user can define a cross-polarization level.

Resolved Issues

  • In a network planning run that was performed after including the pattern of the mobile station via RunMS, sometimes the wrong receiver power values were used, leading to incorrect data rates. This has been fixed.
  • Fixed a bug where the option of multi-threading for standard ray tracing was not respected.
  • Prevented a race condition from occurring when multiple threads read the same antenna-pattern file.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when an invalid file is selected to define a satellite transmitter. Now an appropriate error message is displayed.
  • Fixed an error given in certain simulations involving the Dominant Path Model with Fresnel coefficients.
  • Fixed a problem with computational efficiency for the Dominant Path Model (DPM). This problem had caused simulations with DPM to be slower than expected.
  • Fixed a case in which the computation dialog couldn't be closed after cancelling a simulation.
  • In cases where the user had defined a directory name other than the default for RunMS results, problems could occur later during network planning, as the new name was not always passed on. This has been fixed.
  • Fixed a bug that could lead to the wrong display of transmitter orientation.
  • Fixed a bug that had disabled one route of importing measurement files.
  • Added the option to display ray interaction points in 3D with smaller dots than the default. They could sometimes be a bit large.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur in ProMan when invalid data were loaded in addition to topographical data.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when displaying all propagation paths.
  • Fixed a crash in viewing impulse response results on Windows 7.

WallMan

Resolved Issues

  • A bug has been fixed that prevented the conversion of certain topographical maps that crossed the equator.
  • In WallMan, a rare endless loop that could occur during pre-processing for IRT has been fixed.
  • Fixed a few issues related to HyperWorks licensing, such as a license being checked back in prematurely after preprocessing in WallMan.
  • Fixed a problem with a missing DLL that caused WallMan to crash on Windows 7. This didn't happen for every Windows 7 installation since often other installed software tools already provided the DLL.

WinProp CompoMan

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a crash in CompoMan.