Release Notes: Altair Feko 2021.1.1

Altair Feko 2021.1.1 is available with new features, corrections and improvements. This version (2021.1.1) 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 2021.1.1 Release Notes

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

CADFEKO

Features

  • Added validation for setting faceted UTD on faces. Only PEC faces where the associated region is PEC or free space can be solved using the faceted UTD solution method. Faceted UTD only supports planar triangle meshing.
  • The size of the .fek file is significantly reduced when multiple receiving antennas use the same field data.
  • Added the Ideal power divider application macro in CADFEKO. The application macro generates a network model of an ideal n-port power divider with unequal division, a 2-port Wilkinson power divider with unequal division or an n-port Wilkinson power divider with equal division.
  • Added the Create far field equivalent sources split over frequency application macro in CADFEKO. This application macro creates multiple configurations that each contain a far field equivalent source for a single frequency. Run the Combine far field equivalent sources application macro in POSTFEKO to combine the results for the configurations.

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an assertion failure that got triggered when unlinking a mesh and opting to create new ports if the part contained a FEM line port applied to a SEP region.
  • Resolved an assertion failure with the message !m_connectedNets.contains(pNet) when closing an existing model containing a degenerate net in a cable schematic. This was a regression that got introduced in Feko 2021.
  • Fixed a regression that got introduced in Feko 2021.1 that caused performance issues when adding, modifying or removing requests.
  • Resolved an issue affecting waveguide sources, where unlinking a mesh and selecting to use new ports did not update the source to use the newly created mesh port.
  • Resolved an issue where a Cartesian boundary near field request sampled inside an object instead of on the boundary.
  • Resolved an issue where mesh versions of the modal ports were not created when unlinking a mesh.

EDITFEKO

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed incorrect syntax highlighting of colours for .pre files containing non-ASCII characters.

POSTFEKO

Features

  • The mesh highlight tool is extended with the Faceted Uniform Theory of Diffraction option for highlighting faces in the 3D view that are solved with the faceted UTD method.

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an assertion failure with the message Assertion failed: contains(value) when trying to create a plot in the 3D view of a result that uses the spherical coordinate system, but does not contain any values in the plotted range.
  • Resolved an issue where additional (unrequested) load results were available in models with multiple configurations utilising series loads.
  • Resolved an assertion failure with the message frequencyIndex < m_stack.last().m_numberOfFrequencies when exporting far fields to .ffe file for a model containing multiple configurations with different frequency settings in the different configurations.
  • Resolved an issue with annotations on Cartesian graphs where the annotation arrow and coloured area would be incorrect and appear to be disconnected from the trace after enabling Normalise to ... maximum of all traces on the Display tab.
  • Resolved an issue with annotations where the value did not update when the display unit changed due to changes made to the graph, like showing or hiding another trace with a different range.

Solver

Features

  • Reduced the memory footprint of parallel simulations of Faceted UTD models.
  • Improved the parallel performance of the iterative solution of linear equations phase of a simulation with MLFMM.
  • Reduced the required memory usage of the iterative solution of linear equations during a simulation of a model with multiple media with MLFMM. The extent of memory reduction is model dependent.
  • Accelerated the iterative solution of linear equations phase of an MLFMM solution of models with multiple dielectric media. Additionally, reduced the memory footprint of this phase of the solution.
  • The relative error of the iterative solution is now reported in the .out file as well as standard output in cases where the solution has not sufficiently converged and a few additional iterations are required to monitor the solution's behaviour before determining whether the iterative solution has failed or not.

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an issue that resulted in inaccuracies when power scaling is applied in a faceted UTD solution.
  • Resolved an internal error that may occur during the matrix fill stage of a model consisting of more than one windscreen definition.
  • Resolved an issue that resulted in inaccuracies when computing quantities, such as S-parameters, associated with a FEM line port that is not oriented in a main Cartesian axis.
  • Disabled MPI3 shared memory usage with MPICH and MS-MPI on Windows as it is not supported.
  • Corrected an error message for a FEM line port that is confined to the edges of the mesh. Improved the error detection for FEM line ports.
  • Changed the error regarding surface roughness parameter bounds into a warning.
  • Fixed a bug that caused a segmentation violation for some models that use many aperture sources (AP card).
  • Improve the performance of the configuration setup phase of the solution of a model that uses an aperture field, with many field points, as source. The performance improvements are noticeable when such a simulation is done on Windows.
  • Improved the performance and robustness of a faceted UTD solution involving multiple reflections.
  • Lossy metallic triangles connected to wire segments are now exported to the .epl file.

Support Components

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an issue on Linux systems where the icons on the Documentation tab of the Launcher utility were missing.

WinProp 2021.1.1 Release Notes

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

General

Resolved Issues

  • A user-defined UTM zone can now be specified when converting GeoTIFF topo maps.

ProMan

Features

  • Added support for RunMS post-processing in CNP scenarios.
  • Added support for RunMS predictions along a trajectory defined in a CNP database.
  • Added the capability to produce bit error rate (BER) maps using SNIR values.
  • Increased the maximum number of reflections supported by the urban IRT propagation model from 6 to 20.
  • The transmit power type (OutputPA, EIRP, ERP) is now displayed for each antenna on the Site dialog.
  • Added support for angle of arrival estimation using FMCW radar signal processing.
  • Added support for naming individual trajectories.
  • With the inclusion of a more sophisticated scattering algorithm, the deterministic scattering parameters that belonged to the previous implementation were removed from the GUI.

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an issue that resulted in errors when using a large preprocessed SRT database.
  • The radiating cable losses as well as frequency-dependent amplification or attenuation factors are now correctly considered during link budget analysis.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur in a hybrid urban/indoor (CNP) IRT simulation.
  • Exact reproducibility of results, from one sequential or parallel run to another, is now possible when statistical clearance is applied to clutter heights.
  • Prediction points outside the database polygon, associated with a transmitter, are now ignored.

WallMan

Features

  • Enhanced the conversion of Wavefront .obj files to WinProp indoor database format to include materials and groups.

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an issue that resulted in errors when using a large preprocessed SRT database.
  • Resolved an issue converting a USGS BIL topographical database into native WinProp format.
  • Resolved an issue converting topography in Digital Terrain Elevation Data format for high latitudes.

Application Programming Interface

Features

  • Added support for network planning of projects with trajectories with the WinProp API.
  • Added support for satellite transmitters in the WinProp API.

newFASANT 2021.1.1 Release Notes

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

General

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an issue for Speed Up technique applied to Macro Basis Functions (CBFs) that improves the accuracy of the interpolated field values for some cases.

GUI

Resolved Issues

  • Importing geometry from a format such as STP into the newFASANT graphical interface may have failed without feedback when the import file contained an excessive number of faces/surfaces in contact with each other at one point. An error message was added to indicate the reason for this failure.
  • Resolved a crash when saving an image of near fields in 3D view.
  • Resolved an issue with opening the newFASANT GUI on a remote Linux workstation.

Solver

Features

  • Added support for ACA compression during the generation of MoM-derived basis functions, including near field coupling, when using the CBFM.

Resolved Issues

  • Importing geometry from a format such as STP into the newFASANT graphical interface may have failed without feedback when the import file contained an excessive number of faces/surfaces in contact with each other at one point. An error message was added to indicate the reason for this failure.