Highlights of the 2025 Release
The Feko 2025 release features extensions to many different solvers - enhancing Feko's capabilities in propagation modelling, network planning as well as general and specialist EM analysis application areas. There are various performance improvements, interoperability, and API extensions, enabling more flexible workflows and automation.
Feko
Ground Plane Extensions
By specifying result-specific ground planes, different ground configurations can now be evaluated in a single simulation. Result-specific ground planes can be specified for far fields, near fields, SAR, and receiving antenna requests when the ground plane for the model is set to No ground. The impact of the ground plane(s) on the results is only considered during post-processing. When using result-specific ground planes, the back coupling of ground reflection to current distribution on the structure is neglected.
Note that result-specific ground planes are not supported with RL-GO for 2025.
For PEC, PMC and homogenous half-space ground planes (including result-specific ground planes), any Z-value (height) can now be specified. An example would be a vehicle with an antenna above a metallic plane. In the past, the workflow would have been to translate the vehicle to the correct height; now the height of the ground plane can be modified instead.
Evaluate the near field and far field for a cellular antenna on a vehicle for f = 960 MHz. Three configurations were examined: the vehicle in free space, the vehicle with a result-specific PEC ground plane, and the vehicle with a PEC ground plane in model definition.
RL-GO Extensions
RL-GO now supports the following:
- Multiple GPU usage for parallel MPI RL-GO runs when using manual settings. This results in a huge speedup for RL-GO solutions with multiple diffractions interactions.
An example showing the speedup when using multiple GPUs for RL-GO.
- Higher-order interactions with PEC, PMC, or homogeneous half-space (reflection coefficient approximation) infinite ground plane.
An example showing the impact on phase response at a DF antenna when using RL-GO with and without ground plane.
Multi-Threaded Meshing
The meshing engine now supports multi-threaded meshing of volume regions in the same model. Support for controlling the aspect ratio of elongated mesh triangles was added. Adjusting the maximum allowable aspect ratio can often achieve a more efficient mesh (fewer elements while retaining good geometry representation).
Multi-Threaded PREFEKO
PREFEKO can now use multiple threads when preparing a .fek file for simulation. This can significantly impact overall runtime when performing many simulations (optimization or parameter sweep) or for large .pre files. The efficiency beyond 8 processors is low.
An example using 15.7 million triangles and 642 MB .fek file size.
WinProp
Performance
Accelerated the Intelligent Ray Tracing (IRT) model for urban scenarios in point/trajectory mode.
Accelerated the Intelligent Ray Tracing (IRT) model for urban scenarios in point/trajectory mode.
MIMO Radar
A MIMO antenna configuration can now be specified in the FMCW radar. With N transmitting and M receiving antenna elements, a virtual antenna array of N*M elements can be generated with proper antenna placement. The angle resolution is improved by the multiplicative increase in the number of (virtual) antenna elements.
An example of a range-angle heat map showing the MIMO antenna configuration.
New Result Type in ProMan
The power delay profile can now be displayed where the triangle pulse width is specified in nanoseconds.
An example of a power delay profile plot.
Best Server with Handover
The handover process for the cell assignment can now be considered for trajectory mode. The handover to the new serving cell is only performed if the received signal level (or RSRP/RSRQ, depending on the selected cell assignment criteria) is the defined handover offset [dB] higher for a period longer than the defined TTT (time to trigger) interval [ms].
The left is an example of the best server result without consideration of the handover process, and the right is the result including the handover process. The user moves along the trajectory in a counterclockwise direction. Based on the handover process, the switch to the new serving cell happens at a later position without switching back and forth between the neighboring cells.
WRAP
New Propagation Model
A new propagation model for prediction was added for frequencies below 150 kHz according to ITU‑R P.684-8.
Usability
The Radar Coverage tool now supports distance/height input in nautical miles/feet.
