Release of FEKO Suite 5.5

EMSS is proud to announce the release of FEKO Suite 5.5.  As with every release of FEKO, this release includes significant new features in both the CAD interfaces and the solution engine.  The following is a highlights list of new features on FEKO Suite 5.5.  Users should visit the FEKO Suite 5.5 download area for more complete information.  Users with M&S contracts automatically qualify for an upgrade to FEKO Suite 5.5 and can download the appropriate installation from this download area.  Readers without M&S contracts are invited to contact their local distributor to arrange an evaluation licence.

Geometry modelling

• Primitive dialogs open with sensible default values allowing easy placement of objects and a better visual indication of how a parameter affects the primitive.
  

Previews of how a parameter in an object scales its dimensions
Bottom width	Top depth	Height

Snapping

• Snapping control has been replaced with auto-snapping by snapping to special points (face centre, edge centre, etc.) close to the mouse pointer.
  
• Snapping also snaps to a clever dynamic grid that resizes to the most suitable size for the current view.

Special snapping points	Dynamic grid snapping

New align tool

• A new “align” tool has been introduced to easily place objects on structures - the align tool performs a rotation and a translation as a single transformation and translates from one workplane to another
  
• Ideal for citing an imported antenna model onto a platform, e.g. placing antennas imported to FEKO from Antenna Magus
  

Align tool

User interface and usability

• EM-validation has been extended considerably and it also writes the results to a graphical log where warnings and errors are indicated and explained.
  
• Progress information is indicated while loading and saving of models - this is especially useful for large models.
  
• POSTFEKO has been extended to display axial ratio as both the minor over major axis as well as the major over minor axis.
  

Axial ratio now available for 2 definitions
Minor / major	Major / minor

• A new true type font (TTF) has been added to POSTFEKO to improve the display of text on 2D graphs.
• The FEM (and thus tetrahedral meshing) is now set in the same way as all the other solution methods. It is a solution method option of a dielectric region.
  

Windscreen antenna analysis

• Based on a MoM solution, meshing the metallic windscreen antenna elements and the car body only, not the glass
  
• The new technique takes into account:
  
  • Boundary conditions on the dielectric interfaces for multilayered glass windscreens (saves huge amount of memory compared to MoM-SEP, MoM-VEP and FEM that requires meshing of the different dielectric interfaces)
    
  • Coupling between closely spaced antenna elements (different to the coating method)
    
  • Finite-sized windscreens integrated into full car model
    
  • Curvature/rotation in the windscreen
    

FM/TV windscreen example from industry
Antenna reflection coefficient - Simulation vs measurement
S11-magnitude	S11-phase

FEM modal port boundary condition

New modal port boundary condition for the FEM Model:

• The modal port essentially represents an infinitely thin box which can launch and absorb port modal waves on one side, with PEC backing. The modal side forms part of the boundary to a dielectric volume modelled with the FEM.
  
• The modes correspond to an infinite line formed by extruding the modal face to infinity.
  
• Excitation: The modal port can be excited with the fundamental mode (if no excitation defined then passive port).
  
• Solution: S-parameters can be computed between the fundamental mode of the modal port and other excitations in the model (and of course also near-fields, far-fields and other data).
  
• Typical applications:
  
  • Waveguide (arbitrary cross-section and media)
  • Stripline transmission line
  • Microstrip transmission line

Examples of FEM modal port usage
Co-axial line feed	Waveguide

Generalisation of periodic boundary conditions (PBC) 

Periodic structure analysis has been extended to include:

• Dielectrics using the Surface Equivalence Principle (SEP)
  
• Wires and connection points between wires and triangles
  
• Both wires and triangles (metallic and dielectric) are allowed to touch the periodic boundaries (i.e. continuous current flow across the cell boundary into the neighbouring periodic element)
  
• Far-field of finite array (PBC ignores the edge effects)

PBC analysis of 21 x 21 helix array
Unit cell	3D far-field gain

Miscellaneous kernel updates and extensions

• Grouping of MLFMM now much faster on Windows (typical example took 248 sec, now down to 1 sec)
• Updates to the SAR calculations (relaxed cube validity test for peak SAR, improved local search algorithms, adjustments to comply with IEEE P1528.1/D1.0 from January 2007, e.g. air restriction now 20%).
• Using FEM in a completely closed PEC environment now supported without having MoM basis functions on the metallic triangles (e.g. resonator, closed waveguide).
  

	Magic Tee Waveguide Coupler	Ku-band Cavity Waveguide Filter	Two-path Cut-off Waveguide Filter
Runtime (3 GHz CPU) (per frequency sample)	33.4 sec	17.2 sec	13.7 sec
Memory	62.3 MByte	99.2 MByte	31.3 MByte
Feed method	FEM modal port (fundamental mode)	FEM modal port (fundamental mode)	FEM modal port (fundamental mode)
Model

Licencing and certification

Automatic updates

• New fully automatic update mechanism via:
  
  • Online repository, or
    
  • Local repository (typically for multiple FEKO computer networks, or safe LANs not connected to the internet)
• GUI and command-line versions
• Suite-wide = no individual component updates
• Incremental updates keep downloads to a minimum
• No roll-back mechanism:
  
  • If update fails, existing software intact and re-running of the update will complete the process

Automatic update networks
Web repository	Local LAN repository

Miscellaneous

• Extended detection algorithms of number of cores per CPU to also support most recent CPUs (required for multi-core licence policy).
  
• Improved usage of dongle licences on Windows remote desktops.
  
• Windows installation of FEKO was certified by Veritest (partner of Microsoft) for both client (Windows XP) and server (Windows HPC) environments.