What's new in Feko 2021.1
Altair EmployeeLet’s have a look at the key features of Feko 2021.1!
Multi-frequency sources and receiving antennas
Far field based impressed sources and receiving antennas have been extended to support multi-frequency data. Automatic interpolation of this source data enables simulation at any frequency, supporting more flexible and dramatically simplified model-decomposition workflows.
Using a spherical mode representation of a horn antenna pattern as an impressed source for a parabolic reflector to calculate radiation patterns at flexible frequencies.
A new solver for antenna placement applications
A new UTD-based solver has been added to Feko. The faceted UTD solver can be used to calculate fields and radiation patterns for antenna placement applications at high frequencies. The resource requirements for this solver are independent of frequency but depend on the number of mesh elements required to accurately represent the geometry and the number of field observation points.
More information about this new solver can be found in this article – which will be updated as the capabilities of this exciting new solver are extended in future releases.
New faceted UTD solver added to Feko for frequency-independent antenna placement analysis.
GUI support for Model decomposition requests
Full CADFEKO support for defining Model decomposition requests has been added. This request will trigger the generation of solution-coefficient files (.sol) for the solution which may then be used in an impressed solution coefficient source.
The Model decomposition button added to the Solution requests group in CADFEKO.
Support for predictions along surfaces in urban and indoor propagation studies
Added support for predictions along surfaces of walls (indoor propagation studies) and buildings (urban propagation studies) in WinProp. The distance between the wall/building element surface and the surface prediction planes can be specified.
An example of a building with predictions along wall surfaces (top) and an urban scenario with predictions along building surfaces (bottom).
Other notable changes
- Support for frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar signal post-processing with a sawtooth waveform which includes the effects of FMCW parameters like chirp duration, sweep bandwidth, number of chirps, and Fourier transformations has been added to WinProp.
- The calculation of scattering at rough surfaces during propagation modelling simulations in WinProp has been improved, based on recent research.
- The matrix fill stage of the Feko ACA solver can now be done in parallel on a single node.
- Accelerated the geometry processing phase of the FEM solution of a model with a multi-scale mesh.
- Improved the parallel performance of the FEM sparse matrix setup phase of the solution. Significant performance gains could be achieved for some large FEM models with many FEM surface unknowns.
- All FEM tetrahedra are now included in the computation of the energy normalisation factor, during error estimation, in order to ensure that consistent error estimate levels are obtained across multiple FEM-related error estimate requests.
- The impressed current source can now be connected to the closest wire segment vertex.
- CADFEKO now supports the option to select the dielectric surface impedance approximation as a solution method on dielectric regions and an impedance sheet as the medium on wires.
- newFASANT is now available as part of the Altair Student Edition license program.
- The Speed Up feature in the newFASANT MOM module is now supported when using multiple frequencies and various source types.
- Added support for gain computation and visualisation in the newFASANT GTD module.
- Included ACA compression for the generation of MoM-Derived basis functions and PO-Derived basis functions when using the newFASANT CBFM
- The true residual is now used to evaluate the convergence of an iterative solution with the newFASANT CBFM method.