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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.  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 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 dielectric triangles solved with the GO
20
Number of ray interactions for the UTD / dielectric GO
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