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.