Release Notes: Altair Feko 2022.3
Altair Feko 2022.3 is available with new features, corrections and improvements. It can be applied as an upgrade to an existing 2022.2 installation, or it can be installed without first installing Altair Feko 2022.2.
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.
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.
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.
WRAP is a comprehensive tool for electromagnetic propagation, antenna collocation and spectrum management. WRAP combines propagation analysis, often over large areas with many transmitters and receivers, with system analysis to include complex non-linear equipment properties.
Highlights of the 2022.3 Release
The most notable extensions and improvements to Feko, newFASANT, WinProp and WRAP in the 2022.3 release.
Salient Features in Feko
-
In previous versions of Feko, mesh connectivity between parts could only be achieved when the parts had a common interface with shared vertices (a continuous mesh). For most geometric changes, the whole model needed to be re meshed to maintain connectivity between parts. When making localized geometric changes in large models or models that include imported meshes (for example, generated using Altair HyperMesh or Altair SimLab), the requirement to re mesh all connected parts to maintain connectivity can be challenging.
In Feko 2022.3 for MoM and MoM/MLFMM simulations, a new domain connectivity option was added. By specifying Domain Connectivity for specific parts, the meshes of those parts will be treated as if
connected
in places where the borders of the meshes are close together even though the mesh vertices on those borders are not coincident. This means that parts that have not changed do not need to be re meshed.A typical use case would be an antenna placement study, where an antenna (parameterised geometry) is placed on the roof of a large pre-generated car mesh (static mesh), see Figure 1.Figure 1. An installed performance study using a static imported car mesh and a parameterised antenna geometry. Though there are no shared mesh vertices between the car roof and the antenna ground plane, the roof and antenna ground plane will be treated by the MoM/MLFMM Solver as if connected
based on the Domain Connectivity specified in a DC card.
- In addition to some performance improvements and bug-fixes, the Next-generation CADFEKO has been improved and extended to include various features
that were available in CADFEKO [LEGACY]. A collection of some
of these features is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Some of the extensions added to the new CADFEKO interface implementation. 
- Waveguide mesh ports can now be defined using mesh vertices. This option can be used when specifying a waveguide mesh port for FEM.
- The Feko Source Data Viewer now supports reduced .rei files generated by Altair PollEx, where data that will have little impact on radiated emissions calculations is excluded to reduce both .rei file and simulation times.
- 2D surface graphs in POSTFEKO were extended to support
interactive zooming.
Figure 3. Surface graphs in POSTFEKO support interactive zoom. 
Salient Features in WinProp
- Object dynamics can now be imported from a .csv file for
non-preprocessed indoor databases. Once the dynamics are imported, the time-variant
parameters are greyed out, and the values are set from the file.
Figure 4. An example of object dynamics (moving vehicles in traffic). 
- The ASAM OpenDRIVE format (provides a road network description that is used to simulate
and validate ADAS features) can now be converted to WinProp
indoor format.
Figure 5. An example of a converted OpenDrive database. 
- Trajectories can now be imported from a .csv file. Measured results can be included to visualise and compare measured results against WinProp results by adding a column in the .csv file. The measured results will not show up in the result tree, but a result file will be placed in the results folder.
- The following extensions were made to the Shooting and Bouncing Rays (SBR) method:
- For projects that use an antenna pattern at the transmitter, the SBR method is accelerated by incorporating the antenna's gain in path loss estimation.
- For calculations involving scattering, the accuracy is improved, and the memory consumption is reduced.
- Noise barriers along roads or highways can now be included in urban databases by drawing polylines in WallMan to represent walls.
Salient Features in WRAP
- For LTE communication systems, the following extensions were added:
- The reporting of key performance indicators such as RSRP, RSRQ and RSSI.
- For systems that employ multiple transmission modes, predict data rates and throughput at any receiver (mobile-station) location based on quantities like minimum required received power and minimum Signal-to-Noise-and-Interference Ratio.
- The effect of MIMO is included.
- The map viewer was extended to include population density.
Figure 6. An example of population density included on the map viewer. 
Feko 2022.3 Release Notes
The most notable extensions and improvements to Feko are listed by component.
CADFEKO
Features
- Extended waveguide mesh ports to specify the mesh port using vertices. Use the vertices when specifying a waveguide mesh port for FEM.
- Resolved issues related to the rendering of antenna arrays in the 3D view, such as the missing preview for arrays and rendering of ports and transformed elements. Improved the rendering of an active array element when a ground plane is present.
- Added support for the import of a finite array configuration from a .xml file.
- Added the ability to import mesh segments with different radii from .fek files.
- Added the ability to create mesh triangles for model meshes.
- Added the ability to remove duplicate model mesh triangles.
- Added the ability to merge model mesh vertices within a given tolerance.
- Added the ability to remove collapsed triangles from model meshes.
- Added the ability to merge triangle labels in a model mesh.
- Added support for editing the radius of individual wire segments in a model mesh.
- Extended the Feko Source Data Viewer to support reduced models with removed segment frequency data.
- The icons in the tree have been reordered. item selection and Shod/Hide behavior has been improved.
- Extended geometry import to include AutoCAD .dxf files.
- Implemented missing print functionality for the script editor.
- Added the Model tab to the Default Settings dialog to include default model settings such as model unit, solution settings, export of files and MLFMM/ACA settings.
- The project filter in CADFEKO has been extended to allow filtering of visibility of items the geometry tree and 3D view based on solution settings.
- Extended the Create Unit Cell dialog to include an offset that allows shapes to be moved from the origin.
- Added an option to disable writing of the .pre file when saving the model.
- Added the Request tab to the Default Settings dialog to include default request settings such as far fields, near fields, error estimates, solution currents, S-parameters and transmission/reflection coefficient settings.
- Extended mesh import to include AutoCAD .dxf files.
- Improved the performance of duplicating certain geometry parts, most notably primitive parts. Various operations, such as the split operator, rely on duplicating geometry and could have been extremely slow.
- Added support for symmetry with model meshes and mesh ports.
- Added validation to inform the user that CBFM can not be used with ACA.
- Validation has been extended to provide better feedback when model decomposition is used in unsupported cases with FEM/VEP.
- The Copy original geometry capability has been added to CADFEKO.
- The bundle overlap detection for cables has been improved.
- Added the ability to modify the position of a model mesh vertex.
- Added the ability to modify individual mesh segment radii of a model mesh.
- Added the ability to delete mesh elements from a model mesh.
- Added the ability to delete mesh vertices from a model mesh.
- Adding missing functionality to the Loft tool.
Resolved Issues
- Cable validation now also takes voxel meshes (when FDTD is enabled) into account when checking for a valid mesh.
- When opening legacy CADFEKO models in CADFEKO, or reopening a model in CADFEKO that includes cable bundles, the bundling will be maintained. In some cases with earlier versions, bundling may have been unnecessarily recalculated resulting in an unintended change when opening the model.
- Added API documentation for the MoveItems method on the schematic view.
- Fixed a crash that could have occurred due to a tolerance issue when calculating the location of a cable probe.
- Improved the union operation for cases where it was failing.
- When performing Union operations on certain complex geometries, the Union action no longer continues indefinitely or causes the application to become unresponsive.
- Resolved an issue where saving a model during meshing did not save the mesh.
- Resolved an issue where model status errors were issued due to child entities being considered for validation instead of only considering root-level parts.
- Resolved an issue where DP card values were not being rounded to six significant digits.
- When converting a part that includes ports to primitive, the port assignments are now correctly maintained.
- When converting a part that contains local wire radius settings to primitive, the settings are correctly maintained in the converted part.
- Resolved an issue where the CI card was written incorrectly to the .pre file when a connector was shared between multiple cable paths.
- Improved the performance of opening models with large geometry hierarchies.
- Resolved an issue where the Connectivity tool did not show faces with unbounded edges in red for model meshes.
- Model mesh rendering now takes opacity into account.
- Resolved an issue where it was not possible to select mesh elements in the 3D view.
- Fixed the rendering of simulation mesh with waveguide mesh ports defined by vertices.
- Removed the Rendering Options dialog since the settings for rendering mode, transparency mode, 3D view text, and face displacement no longer apply to CADFEKO.
- Added right-click context menus to sliders on the Advanced tab of the Create Mesh dialog so that it is possible to restore the selected slider or all values to default.
- Fixed an assertion that occurred when importing a large .stl file.
CADFEKO [LEGACY]
Resolved Issues
- Fek format version errors no longer occur when importing fek files into legacy CADFEKO.
EDITFEKO
Features
- Added the new DC card that can be used to connect a discontinuous mesh and geometry where one is a static mesh and the second is dynamic parameterized geometry.
Resolved Issues
- Fixed a problem where the AR card did not accept the number of phi and theta points when defining a pattern in the .pre file. Opening the card panel when the card was populated with theta and phi points triggered an error that the card contained unknown field values.
POSTFEKO
Features
- Added Zoom area and Zoom to extents to the right-click context menu of surface graphs to allow for interactive zooming.
Resolved Issues
- Unexpected asserts no longer happen when using the POSTFEKO Mixed Mode S-Parameter application macro.
Solver
Features
- The HyperSpice library used by Feko has been upgraded.
- Support for SGI-MPT has been stopped.
- The Characteristic Basis Function Method (CBFM) can now be used in conjunction with MoM in the FekoSolver. This implementation will be extended to support MoM/MLFMM in future releases to improve impact for a wider range of practical problems for applications such as scattering analysis.
- The coordinates as well as element ID of defective triangles or connections are now written to the .out file.
- Updated Intel MKL to version 2022.2.
- Upgraded Intel MPI to version 2021.8 for Linux (though Intel MPI 2021.8 can also be used on Windows operating systems, Intel MPI 2021.2 is retained as default due to limitations observed in the number of shared memory allocations that can be made during a solution).
Resolved Issues
- When applying the RL-GO method to curvilinear meshes of certain curved geometries, the accuracy has been improved for cases where a higher number of interactions is considered in the ray-tracing.
- Fixed ACA memory problems for multiscale models.
- Improved solution stability of near singular SPICE circuit matrices. An example would be connecting ideal voltage sources in a delta configuration.
- Fixed a segmentation violation for the hybrid FEM/FMM when the FMM sparse matrix is large (more than 2**31-1 entries).
- The problem of Feko simulations over multiple frequencies, running out of memory during the
Backward substitution for FEM coupling matrix
phase, that was observed on some hardware configurations, has been addressed by the IMPI upgrade to version 2021.8. - ERROR 53420 is no longer issued during ACA matrix factorisation when running on some AMD machines.
Shared Interface Changes
Support Components
Resolved Issues
- Support for RCS simulations using RL-GO was improved in the Farm model to cluster application macro so that chunking is more practical.
WinProp 2022.3 Release Notes
The most notable extensions and improvements to WinProp are listed by component.
General
Features
- Intersections of DPM rays with vegetation and furniture (already considered in the computations) will now also be reported in the .str file.
Resolved Issues
- Fixed a bug in the Shooting and Bouncing Rays algorithm that caused too many rays to be spawned by diffraction at edges and wedges.
ProMan
Features
- Improved the accuracy and reduced the memory consumption of calculations involving scattering in the Shooting and Bouncing rays method.
- Accelerated the SBR solver, for projects that use an antenna pattern at the transmitter, by incorporating the gain of the antenna in pathloss estimation.
- Export in ProMan supports now transparent images in PNG and TIFF format where the not computed pixels are no longer white but transparent.
- Added to SRT the phenomenon of double edge diffraction by the same building, such that the ray grazes the roof or a side wall between the two edge diffractions. This is important for obtaining the power behind the building.
- FMCW radar post-processing is aligned now with the internal option of rays superposition (i.e. coherent or incoherent superposition of rays). It used to perform coherent superposition of rays in all cases. The power values can be computed now from the exported IQ data (in case of incoherent superposition of rays).
- Added support to import trajectories and points with propagation results.
- Enabled the import of object dynamics from a .csv file. An example that shows how to control object dynamics, such as moving vehicles in traffic, by modifying project files, is available on the Altair Knowledge Base. Such control is useful if the vehicle needs to react to radar observations within the same simulation.
- The computation window, where messages are written during the simulation, can now be resized for easier viewing.
- Added an option to the Deterministic Two-Ray Model to include the ground-reflected ray after the last diffraction point. With this option, constructive and destructive interference in the final segment of the ray path will be explicitly calculated. Without this option, the breakpoint effect will be used.
Resolved Issues
- Corrected the power of rays reflected in the specular direction at surfaces with high roughness that cause significant scattering. In some cases, this power was too high.
- Fixed an incorrect display of numbers of OFDM subcarriers for control, reference or data under OFDM Settings. Some numbers were displayed as zero while they clearly should not be zero; this was a display error only. Results were not affected.
- Prevented the creation of diffraction points on wedges with angles close to 180 degrees in the Urban Dominant Path Model.
- Improved transmission loss consideration in the SBR solver for cases where there are interaction points in multiple nearby objects.
- Fixed a bug in which a ray path through vegetation could have an unintended negative power loss.
WallMan
Features
- Added the capability to draw polylines in urban databases to represent walls such as noise barriers along roads.
- Implemented a converter for traffic scenarios from OpenDrive.
Application Programming Interface
Features
- Added support for vertical prediction planes to the API.
WRAP 2022.3 Release Notes
The most notable extensions and improvements to WRAP are listed by component.
General
Features
- Updated propagation model ITU-R P.528 to the latest version (version 5).
- Provided an option to include thermal noise in collocation interference calculations.
- Added the ability to display population data in the Map Viewer.
- Added option to display multiple stations in Google Maps / Google Earth after exporting WRAP results to a .kml or .kmz file.
- For LTE communication systems, the effect of MIMO can be included.
- For LTE communication systems that employ multiple transmission modes, WRAP can predict data rates and throughput at any receiver (mobile-station) location based on quantities like minimum required received power and minimum Signal-to-Noise-and-Interference Ratio.
- For LTE telecommunication systems, WRAP can now report key performance indicators such as RSRP, RSRQ and RSSI.
- Improved the calculation accuracy of the location of surface reflections. The improvement will be noticeable when a station is at high altitude.
Resolved Issues
- Fixed a bug in ITU-R P.619 that could sometimes, depending on station height, result in the transmission loss not being computed.
- Refined the criteria that decide which antenna is treated as transmitter and which one as receiver for calculations with ITU-R P.1546-6, in accordance with this ITU recommendation.
- Resolved an issue with the Cost and Coverage Optimiser for population data in raster format.
- Harmonized the handling of situations when a propagation model is used with parameters outside their valid ranges.
- Corrected API message results relevant to creation, modification, usage and deletion of allotments, cables, and stations.