Release Notes: Altair Feko 2019.0.1

Altair Feko 2019.0.1 is available with new features, corrections and improvements. This version (2019.0.1) is a patch release that should be applied to an existing 2019 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.

Feko 2019.0.1 Release Notes

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

CADFEKO

Feature

  • Allow the use of metallic media for the ground plane option Homogeneous half space in region Z<0 (reflection coefficient approximation). Validation prevents setting a metal as the ground medium when using the Sommerfeld formulation.

Resolved Issues

  • The Import geometry dialog detects ODB++ files with the extension .tar.gz. In older versions it was required to change the drop-down list selection from Unknown to ODB++ before files with this extension could be imported.
  • Upgraded the ODB++ library to support layer thickness when importing geometry.
  • Resolved an issue where Parasolid error P555 was encountered when importing a .igs file into an existing CADFEKO model.
  • Added validation to the Face properties dialog to prevent the specification of incorrect material for a windscreen reference face. CEM validate detects windscreen reference faces in existing models where the face medium is set to a setting other than Default or PEC.
  • Resolved an assertion that failed with message ending in expressionValid. The assertion failed when meshing and saving a model after using the API to first add an S-parameter request with a single waveguide port and then modifying the request using SetProperties to include more ports.
  • Resolved an issue on the Import mesh dialog that caused the wrong type of files to be listed when browsing for files after selecting CADFEKO mesh or Voxel mesh as the file format. Selecting CADFEKO mesh format now correctly results in .cfm files being listed, and selecting Voxel mesh format shows .raw files.

POSTFEKO

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved the issue that unit scaling was not applied to imported electric and magnetic field data.
  • FFE file imports now support header fields in any order of appearance and white space delimiters consisting of spaces, tabs or a combination of both.
  • Resolved an issue where an insufficient overlap warning was shown incorrectly for certain time analysis simulation frequency ranges.
  • Resolved an issue where the application could not be closed after running a script that terminated with an error.

Solver

Features

  • Added support for diffraction effects from edges and wedges of RL-GO PEC faces meshed with curvilinear triangles.
  • Significantly improved the time efficiency of the geometry processing stage of the solution for FEM/MoM models.
  • The definition of metallic materials is now allowed for the ground plane option Homogeneous half space in region Z<0 (reflection coefficient approximation).
  • Improved the time efficiency of the solution by allowing the re-use of previously computed currents in a .str file for different power scaling applied to a model. Recalculation of the surface currents is avoided if a different source power scaling is applied to the model.

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a bug that resulted in the visibility of some wedges or edges to be incorrectly identified when the model is illuminated by a point source or a plane wave. This led to inaccurate results when computing diffraction contributions from from the misidentified wedges with RL-GO.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in some rays, interacting with some RL-GO surfaces meshed with curvilinear triangles, being incorrectly traced.
  • Refined the information about ray interactions with geometry written in the “RL-GO Engine Statistics” section of the .out file.
  • Corrected the information in the header of exported .ray files to reflect that the exported field quantities are based on the magnetic field.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in the inability to visualise computed fields and received power of a model with receiving near field apertures in POSTFEKO.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in an internal error for a single wire model with one-dimensional periodic boundary conditions (PBC) where the wire is perpendicular to the vector defining the orientation of the PBC.
  • Fixed a bug where a warning regarding singular fields was wrongly issued during far field calculations of a model involving a homogeneous ground space modelled with exact Sommerfeld integrals. This warning is no longer produced.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in incorrect computation of diffraction coefficients when a PEC RL-GO surface is embedded in a dielectric background medium.
  • Monostatic RCS is now calculated using the phase offset of the incident plane wave rather than the offset specified at the coordinate axis of the far field request.
  • Updated the warning message concerning the thickness of a coating layer applied to a segment to include cable specific details if the coating is indeed applied to the shield of a cable.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in a time increase of the phase of the solution during which the right hand side vector is calculated for some models with many impressed sources.

Shared Interface Changes

Feature

  • Added a command line option (--file-info) that queries the application versions that were used to modify CADFEKO models and POSTFEKO session files.

Support Components

Resolved Issue

  • Resolved an issue with the keytips of the Feko Launcher where the launch commands for other components took precedence over the keytip actions.

WinProp 2019.0.1 Release Notes

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

ProMan

Features

  • The currently displayed 3D view in ProMan can now be saved to a bitmap.
  • The prediction area is now automatically adjusted to be equal to the smallest rectangle that includes transmitters and defined trajectories in case the dominant path model is used for prediction in indoor, urban or rural scenarios. Previously, this rectangle only covered the defined trajectory and results were not computed in case the transmitter was located outside the rectangle.
  • Results along trajectories are now exported to an ASCII file in a tab separated format for each computed quantity during propagation modelling, mobile station post-processing or network planning. A unique trajectory identifier associates computed results to each trajectory defined in the project.

Resolved Issues

  • The ProMan GUI now has added support for checks on the range of acceptable values that can be entered for path loss exponents of the dominant path model.
  • Fixed a bug when computing the stream power results at a mobile station with more than one receiver. The best value from sub-channels associated with each receiving antenna is now correctly considered in the aggregated stream power results of the mobile station.
  • An explicit error message is now issued for results in point mode with multiple prediction heights in a time-variant database.
  • The specific transmit antenna used and its orientation (azimuth, tilt) are now written out in the result file, with channel matrices per point, that is obtained after post-processing with RunMS.
  • Fixed a bug when computing propagation results of a rural project that uses a satellite transmitter in a database defined in geodetic coordinates.
  • Changed the default angular orientation of the imported RCS data from North (0) to East (90) to East (0) to North (90). The new orientation is in line with the conventional spherical coordinate system used in Feko.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in trajectory or point mode predictions not being automatically disabled when the area of planning is set to “Individual for each transmitter”. For this setting, area wide mode is now automatically activated.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in propagation results associated with a carrier being displayed even after invalidating a computation by changing prediction parameters.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in an extra line, with the input coordinates, being written to the output file when converting from the longitude-latitude system to the UTM coordinate system.
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in a failure to open the user guide from within WinProp applications in a server installation.
  • Fixed a bug when defining the prediction area around cells. The default prediction area is now automatically selected when the simulation area is set to Individual for each transmitter. This allows for the definition of a single prediction area that applies to all cells.

Application Programming Interface

Resolved Issue

  • Databases saved using AutoCAD file formats (.dxf and .dwg files) can now be converted into WinProp's database formats through the WinProp API on Linux.