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Educational use of FEKO

Overview

Educational use of FEKO: options and benefits

The FEKO team is committed to supporting engineering education through FEKO. There are a number of options available to students and staff at academic institutions to add value to their teaching or research, through FEKO. Using FEKO also benefits students in that they gain experience with a leading CEM tool widely used in industry. Academic institutions in turn can benefit through using FEKO, by strengthening industrial ties.

For under-graduate students

Anybody can register for a FEKO LITE licence, which is free of charge and without expiry date. FEKO LITE is a version of FEKO which is limited in terms of computational power. Notwithstanding the limitations, simple antenna problems as those typically encountered in under-graduate courses on electromagnetic field theory and antenna theory can be solved with FEKO LITE. For example, a dipole antenna, a Yagi-Uda array, a probe-fed patch antenna on an infinite substrate, and many others. Students can experiment with these structures, observing the effects of various structural parameters. FEKO's sophisticated user interface with powerful visualisation capabilities can help students grasp concepts such as radiation, far fields, near fields, resonance, gain, directivity, etc.

For under-graduate instructors

To instructors of under-graduate courses on antennas, microwave circuits, EM theory or CEM methods, FEKO can be an invaluable tool. Students can use FEKO simply to gain a better understanding of the sometimes abstract concepts involved, making use of FEKO's comprehensive visualisation capabilities through an easy-to-use GUI. Beyond this, FEKO could also be incorporated into teaching material. For example, tasks on designing, simulating or constructing simple antennas could include FEKO. Input impedances, radiation patterns, near fields, gain and losses can be calculated, not to mention parameter studies where valuable insights may be gained.

Regarding licencing: all of the above can be obtained completely free of charge, by having the class register as FEKO LITE users. Alternatively, should the treatment of more advanced problems be a priority, full FEKO licences may be purchased or rented (with academic discount). With every full licence purchased or rented, nine additional "Classroom" licences can be applied for. These Classroom licences provide the full functionality of FEKO, but with a memory limit.

At present, FEKO is being used at more than 50 educational institutions worldwide in teaching the principles and practices of EM engineering.

For post-graduate course work

FEKO is ideally suited as a teaching tool in courses on more advanced topics in antennas (e.g. arrays, wide-band antennas, printed antennas, corporate feeds), microwave devices (e.g. waveguide filters and couplers, matching networks) and CEM methods (full-wave methods such as the MoM, MLFMM and FEM, or asymptotic methods such as PO and the UTD). Non-radiating networks can be included in models and S-parameters can be calculated. Concepts such as higher-order modes, modal S-parameters, passive component design, spherical modes and diffraction theory may be powerfully illustrated to students, giving them the opportunity to apply their knowledge and to observe the results for themselves.

Appropriate licencing options would be the full FEKO Suite or Classroom licences.

For post-graduate projects

In this case applications are widely varying, but with work of an advanced nature the full FEKO Suite is recommended. A parallel licence for cluster computing might be appropriate for very large problems. Using FEKO at this level can save students the trouble of developing their own codes. Conversely, if in-house codes are being developed then FEKO could serve as a benchmarking tool.

At the research forefront

FEKO is a leading CEM tool, including state-of-the-art technologies such as an extremely efficient parallel implementation of the MLFMM and sophisticated hybridisations with asymptotic methods. FEKO is currently being used at many world-leading research institutions. The top-end workstation licences might be appropriate. FEKO has been used on various high performance computing clusters, including a 1024 node, 14.7 Tflops machine.

The FEKO team has many years of combined research experience and can advise on the best solution options, if needed.

Academic Licencing

Academic licence options

This table lists the main properties of the various academic licencing options.

Licence option
 Purchase policy
 Option to rent
 Parallel processing
 Solution restrictions
 RAM restriction
FEKO LITE
 Free
 Not applicable
 No
 Yes
 Yes (20 MBytes)
FEKO Classroom edition

Institutions can apply for 9 Classroom licences, free of charge, for each full educational licence purchased or rented. The Classroom licences are intended for teaching, and the instructor needs to submit an application in the form of a short summary of the intended usage (i.e. course outline, course dates, number of students).

 Yes
 No
 None
 Yes (512 MBytes)
FEKO Suite (full edition, educational licence)
 Academic discount
 Yes
 Yes (optional)
 None
 None

FEKO LITE

FEKO LITE

What is FEKO LITE?

FEKO LITE is a fully featured version of FEKO, but with limitations on the size of problem that can be solved (listed below).  FEKO LITE is ideally suited to forming part of under-graduate courses on EM engineering (EM theory, antenna design, etc.). Antenna models can be created very quickly within the powerful GUI; exposing students to CAD concepts along the way. Alternatively, instructors could provide students with parametrised models which they can then easily experiment with, in order to gain insight into the course work at hand. FEKO LITE could also form the basis for simple antenna design projects.

Using FEKO LITE

Registration as a FEKO LITE user is absolutely free of charge and without expiration date. 

  • Request to download FEKO LITE.  You will be asked to provide your email address (which identifies you in our customer database in future) and some personal information, which we treat as confidential.  An automated response will be sent to you explaining how to download and install FEKO LITE.
  • Register or renew your FEKO LITE licence.  FEKO LITE will work without registration for a limited period.  After expiry of this period, you can continue to use FEKO LITE free of charge, but you will have to register it.

FEKO LITE example projects

To demonstrate the capabilities of FEKO LITE, a few example projects are listed below.
 

Microstrip patch antenna

A probe-fed, rectangular patch antenna on an infinite substrate backed by a ground plane, is modelled. The frequency response is first calculated, using FEKO's adaptive frequency sampling feature. From this result the resonant frequency follows as 2.8 GHz. The antenna is then analysed specifically at its resonant frequency, to obtain the current distribution and the radiation pattern. Below on the left, the input impedance as a function of frequency is displayed in both Cartesian format and Smith-chart format. On the right a POSTFEKO screenshot is shown, where the structure itself, the current distribution and the radiation pattern is being examined at resonance.

Yagi-Uda wire antenna

A Yagi-Uda wire antenna with one excitation element, three director elements, and one reflector element is considered. On the left, a POSTFEKO screenshot is shown, where the structure is displayed as well as the simulated input impedance response in the range 300 to 500 MHz. As can be observed, the input impedance is almost purely real at 400 MHz. On the right, the calculated current distribution and radiation pattern at 400 MHz is being examined.

Monopole antenna on a finite ground plane

A quarter-wavelength monopole mounted on a finite ground plane, of which the circular circumference is 3 wavelengths, is simulated. On the left, the geometry and solution set-up in CADFEKO is shown. On the right, a POSTFEKO screenshot is shown which includes a 2D far-field pattern cut, the current distribution on the structure, and a 3D radiation pattern visualisation.

 

Licence restrictions

The following table details the FEKO LITE licence restrictions.

Model elements
 Limit
Number of wire segments
 100
Number of  triangular surface patches (metallic, dielectric, for MoM or PO or surface of FEM region)
 300
Number of cuboidal volume elements
 20
Number of polygonal plates (UTD or PO)
 5
Number of UTD cylinders
 1
Number of tetrahedral volume elements (FEM)
 0
Total number MoM and PO basis functions
 600
Number of layers for a planar Green's function
 2
Number of triangular surface patches solved with GO (ray launching) 20
Number of ray interactions for the UTD or GO (ray launching) 2
Solution specification
 Limit
Near-field observation points per request
 1000
Far-field observation directions per request
 703
Number of frequency values
 10
Solution metrics
 Limit
Main memory that can be allocated by FEKO kernel
 20 MByte
Number of processes for parallel FEKO version
 2
Total run-time (wallclock time) of FEKO kernel
 10 min
Number of discrete frequency sampling points for adaptive frequency sampling
 10
Maximum frequency bandwidth fmax/fmin for adaptive frequency sampling
 3
Number of simultaneously active excitations
 5
Number of optimisation variables (degrees of freedom)
 2
Number of optimisation steps (i.e. iterations)
 20
Number of sample points (frequency or time domain) for TIMEFEKO
 128

Student Competition

FEKO Student Competition

The FEKO Student Competition is organised annually by the FEKO team to support engineering education and to promote innovative academic use of FEKO. Any original FEKO simulation work may be submitted for the competition.

Eligibility

Any under-graduate or post-graduate student at a recognized educational institution, working on a project in EM engineering and making use of FEKO, may enter. Students who would like to start using FEKO in order to enter, are welcome to contact us.

Free access to the CrunchYard large scale computing facility

Entrants might need to run simulations which require more computational resources than what they have access to. Such entrants are welcome to contact us at the email address below to organise access to the CrunchYard large scale computing facility. CrunchYard has kindly agreed to provide free access (with limits determined by them) to their facilities. For more information on FEKO at CrunchYard, see our page on Parallel Processing.

Prize

The winner will have a choice between the following two options, to the value of up to $2000:

  1. A notebook computer (specifications dependant on availability at the end of the competition), or
  2. An all travel expenses paid trip to an international EM engineering conference of their choice

Application Procedure

Submissions must be made before the deadline of 24 September 2010, to student_comp2010@emss.co.za. Results will be announced here on the FEKO website, by 29 October 2010. Submissions should consist of the following:

  1. A completed application form (FEKO Student Competition Application Form 2010)
  2. A concise report (PDF, DOC or PPT file in either article or slideshow style, or a link to a web page where the project is documented)

Evaluation Criteria

Reports are evaluated with respect to the following criteria:

  • Clear definition of the EM problem
  • Quality of FEKO models and proper usage of solution options
  • Presentation of the results
  • Verification of results (i.e. comparison with measurements and/or results from other numerical tools)
  • Interpretation of results
  • Overall quality of the report
  • The EM complexity of the actual problem solved will not be a major consideration

Previous Winners