Release Notes: Altair Feko 2021.2.3

Altair Feko 2021.2.3 is available with new features, corrections and improvements. This version (2021.2.3) 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 2021.2.3 Release Notes

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

POSTFEKO

Features

  • Added support for setting the independent axis of a surface graph to a swept parameter when plotting parameter sweep results.
  • Added a new script to the POSTFEKO application macro library which allows the import of simulation results from newFASANT projects to be imported and processed as custom data.

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an issue where an assertion failure could be triggered when plotting characteristic mode results on a Cartesian graph and switching the independent axis to Mode index (untracked). This fix resolves the problem for results calculated with much older versions of Feko, while an improvement made to Feko 2020.1.2 already prevents a similar assertion failure from triggering when plotting results from more recent versions.
  • Resolved an issue that caused negative axis values to be returned incorrectly as “untracked” values when using the API to query available axis values.
  • Fixed a regression that got introduced in Feko 2021.1.1 that caused incorrect half power beamwidth (HPBW) annotations for polar graphs.
  • Lifted the restriction that triangle normals need to point in the same direction for the tool that indicates mesh connections where a certain included angle is exceeded.
  • Added case-sensitive checks to prevent an assertion from failing when calling API functions like GetFixedAxisValue with the axis string specified incorrectly, for example, using “theta” instead of “Theta”.
  • Resolved an issue with Cartesian graph annotations that caused the annotations to be positioned at the wrong location, or not added to the graph at all, for some interpolated trace values.

Solver

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved MPI errors observed during certain RL-GO solutions on a machine with shared memory architecture.
  • Resolved an internal error that may have occured during the parallel MLFMM solution for some models.
  • A change introduced in Feko 2021.1 resulted in a small reduction in accuracy for simulations involving wire segments. This has been corrected.
  • Improved the accuracy of the computed charges for models including some degenerate curvilinear triangles, solved with high order basis functions.

WinProp 2021.2.3 Release Notes

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

ProMan

Features

  • Improved and accelerated the detection of convex wedges for diffraction calculations.
  • Accelerated SBR simulations in projects with a large number of transmissions in the propagation path.
  • Improved load balancing of parallel SBR simulations, resulting in improved parallel efficiency and faster simulation times.
  • ASCII output, when requested, will now include all requested points, including those where no result could be computed (for example, where no communication was possible).
  • Added support for adding time-variant transmitters and prediction points in urban IRT simulations.
  • For transmitters or prediction points moving along a curved trajectory but not exactly on the trajectory, such as antennas on aircraft wings, rotation is now included in a natural way relative to a moving reference point on the trajectory.

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an issue where a connector component could be missing after closing and reopening the project.
  • Visibility relations between stationary and dynamic objects are now accurately considered in time-variant IRT simulations of indoor projects.
  • Resolved a crash in a project where consider scattering at ground was enabled while consider additionally rays with scattering was disabled.
  • Resolved an issue around power superposition of cells belonging to the same distributed antenna system during network planning.
  • Improved the initial detection of objects that will be hit by shooting and bouncing rays (SBR), so no object larger than the maximum ray tube width or height will be overlooked by the rays that were launched from the transmitter.
  • Improved the existing transmitter height correction for transmitters that are accidentally placed inside a building in an urban scenario.
  • Improved the visualization of trajectory results for time variant projects. Now all the points on a trajectory for a given time step are shown simultaneously.
  • Resolved an issue with the consideration of scattering loss that cause a higher gain than expected.
  • Prevented the occurrence of small random differences in the results of repeated simulations with the parabolic equation solver.
  • Relaxed an error into a warning during .kml file export from small topo maps with ellipsoid coordinate system other than WGS-84.
  • Improved the display of results in urban IRT projects where the pre-processing had been done with a resolution factor greater than one. The necessary interpolation between available result pixels is applied.
  • Resolved a case of missing animation frames for a time-variant project with topography data.

WallMan

Resolved Issues

  • Improved the robustness of object triangulation in databases containing closed polygons.
  • Visibility relations between stationary and dynamic objects are now accurately considered in time-variant IRT simulations of indoor projects.
  • Improved geometry checks involving wedges in a database, leading to accuracy improvements of predictions using the DPM, SRT and IRT methods.
  • Corrected the trajectory definition in WallMan using ALD mode. Objects now move in the right direction.

Application Programming Interface

Features

  • Default ground material properties can now be specified via the WinProp API.
  • Added an example on how to use the API for network planning with the 5G-TDD communication protocol. This example is distributed with the installation.
  • Added support for predictions along surfaces in indoor databases with the API.
  • Add support for predictions on arbitrary planes with the WinProp API.

Resolved Issue

  • Resolved an issue where network throughput results computed by WinPropCLI on Linux could not be viewed with ProMan on Windows.

newFASANT 2021.2.3 Release Notes

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

General

Features

  • Near-field data calculated on a Cartesian boundary in Feko and saved as .efe and .hfe files may now be imported into the newFASANT interface and used as an excitation for simulations with newFASANT solvers.
  • Added a new script to the POSTFEKO application macro library which allows the import of simulation results from newFASANT projects to be imported and processed as custom data.

GUI

Resolved Issue

  • When a NASTRAN file is imported into newFASANT and rotated, the visualisation of the imported geometry will now remain correct if the project is closed and reopened. For projects created in versions where this bug was present, geometry will have to be re-imported for the visualisation to be correct.

Solver

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved an issue in the GTD module where creeping rays could not be resolved for specific near field points.
  • The computed transmission of rays using the newFASANT GTD solver will no longer incorrectly calculate null amplitude transmission for some cases.
  • Resolved a segmentation fault in the PO module where a crash occurs for specific observation directions with specific number of processors.