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Overview of FEKO

What is FEKO?

FEKO is a comprehensive electromagnetic (EM) analysis software suite, building on state of the art computational EM (CEM) techniques to provide users with software that can solve a wide range of electromagnetic problems.

The multiple solution techniques available within FEKO make it applicable to a wide range of problems for a large array of industries. Typical applications include:

  • Antennas: analysis of horns, microstrip patches, wire antennas, reflector antennas, conformal antennas, broadband antennas, arrays
  • Antenna placement: analysis of antenna radiation patterns, radiation hazard zones, etc. with an antenna placed on a large structure, e.g. ship, aircraft, armoured car
  • EMC: analysis of diverse EMC problems including shielding effectiveness of an enclosure, cable coupling analysis in complex environments, e.g. wiring in a car, radiation hazard analysis
  • Bio-electromagnetics: analysis of homogeneous or non-homogeneous bodies, SAR extraction
  • RF components: analysis of waveguide structures, e.g. filter, slotted antennas, directional couplers
  • 3D EM circuits: analysis of microstrip filters, couplers, inductors, etc.
  • Radomes: analysis of multiple dielectric layers in a large structure
  • Scattering problems: RCS analysis of large and small structures
Modelling features

GUI Features

  • Large array of primitives for model creation (e.g. helix, cone, wire, paraboloid, hyperboloid, bezier curves)
  • Importation of externally computed lists of points for creation of lines, polygons, etc.
  • Tree based access to simulation elements (settings, materials, grids, results, etc.)
  • Selection, zooming, 3-D mouse-only based handling, etc.
  • Full solver control via GUI

 

Excitations

  • Voltage or current source at a port
  • Port definitions at wires, edges, waveguide aperture or stripline
  • Plane wave
  • Magnetic point source
  • Electric point source
  • Point source with specified radiation pattern
  • Impressed line currents
  • Near-field aperture
  • Spherical modes

 

CAD Import and Export Features

  • Parasolid import and export are standard components of FEKO
  • AutoCAD DXF, IGES, STEP, ProEngineer, Unigraphics, CATIA V4, CATIA V5 and ACIS Exchange (SAT) are additional, licenced options

 

Mesh Import Features

  • FEKO mesh import is a standard component of FEKO
  • FEMAP neutral, NASTRAN, meshed AUTOCAD DXF, STL mesh, PATRAN mesh, Ansys CDB file mesh, Concept mesh, ABAQUS mesh, ASCII data format mesh as additional options

 

Meshing Features

  • Variable mesh densities in a single model to accurately and efficiently model small features
  • Mesh density specifiable on faces and edges
  • Mesh fixing tools

 

Post Processing Features

  • 2-D and 3-D views
  • 2-D XY plots, polar plots, Smith chart
  • Radiation pattern (3-D in model, 2-D XY/polar)
  • Radiation and far-field data, Radar Cross-Section (RCS), etc.
  • SAR (IEEE standard compliant whole body average, 10g cube localized, 1g cube localized)
  • Full multi-port S-Parameter extraction
  • Several visualization options for surfaces, incl. isosurfaces, 2D field cuts
  • Multiple results displayable in same viewport for comparison
  • 64-bit enabled for large model viewing
  • Export views to image formats

 

Automatic software updates

  • For users with maintenance and support agreements
  • Update from online repository or local repository (on private network)
Solver features

Numerical methods

The FEKO solver is based on the Method of Moments (MoM) and was the first commercial code to utilise the multi-level fast multipole method (MLFMM) for the solution of electrically large problems when it was released with Suite 4.2 in June 2004. In FEKO, the MoM is hybridised with the following solution techniques:

  • Finite Element Method (FEM)
  • Physical Optics (PO)
  • Geometric Optics (GO) based on ray launching
  • Uniform Theory of Diffraction (UTD)

This hybridisation implies that these solution techniques can be applied to different parts of the same model to optimise the solution time and results.

 

Computational features

Advanced features that enable complex models to be solved efficiently include:

  • Advanced adaptive frequency interpolation scheme for the efficient calculation of broadband responses.
  • Efficient out-of-core solver (also available in parallel) for large scale problems.
  • Multilayer planar Green's function for modelling of real earth or dielectric substrates.
  • Various options to model dielectric bodies (volume / surface meshes, approximations for earth, thin sheets, coated wires).

 

Optimisation functionality

  • Grid search (optimum for specified test points)
  • Linear search (Nelder-Mead)
  • Genetic Algorithms
  • Particle Swarm
  • GUI interface for construction of goal functions (fitness functions)
  • Weighted combination of multiple goal functions
  • Live feedback on optimisation process and goal function status
Platforms and licencing

Solver Platforms and OS

Platform
 OS
Intel / AMD (32-bit ix86)
 Windows (2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2003, 2008, 2008 R2)
Linux
Intel / AMD (64-bit x86_64) Windows (XP 64-bit, Windows 7 64-bit, Server 2003, 2008, 2008 R2 64-bit)
Linux (64-bit version)
IBM PowerPC
 AIX
Intel (64-bit Itanium)
 HP-UX
Windows
Linux
HP PA-2.0
 64-bit HP-UX 11.00
SUN Ultrasparc II (32-bit)
 Solaris, SunOS
SUN Ultrasparc III
 Solaris, SunOS


GUI Platforms and OS

  • Windows and Linux (32-bit and 64-bit)

 

Parallel Processing

  • 32-bit systems can only address 2 GBytes of RAM per process
  • 64-bit systems can address more than 2 GBytes of RAM per process and therefore have an advantage over 32-bit systems
  • Scalable to multiple processor servers or clusters with various interconnect technologies (e.g. Ethernet, Myrinet, Infiniband)

 

Network Features

  • Remote execution of solvers from GUI versions

 

Licencing

  • Three licensing and price categories: Silver, Gold and Platinum dependent on platform
  • CPU-based licencing enables parallel processing on multi-core CPUs without extra licence costs
  • Free evaluation licence
  • Educational licence options are available for academic institutions or the creators of teaching material
  • Classroom licences (256 MByte limitation) are available to academic institutions who purchase or rent full licences
  • FEKO LITE (limited, licenced, but FREE version of FEKO)
  • Floating licences are supported via single or redundant licence server configurations
  • Dongle licensing is supported for multiple installations of a single licence; note that dongle licensing is only supported for Windows and Linux on IA32, AMD64, EM64T and IA64 platforms
FEKO gallery

 

  

Radiation pattern of an air traffic control antenna at 120 MHz, mounted on a generic airliner. The MLFMM offers a very efficient solution.

  

Radiation hazard analysis for personal radios carried inside an automobile. The human phantoms are modelled with the FEM, while the antennas and bodywork are modelled with the MoM.

 

  

Specification of cable paths for automotive cable coupling analysis.

  

Radiation pattern and induced surface currents, for a VHF whip antenna mounted on a naval vessel. The sea surface is modelled as an infinite, conducting plane.

 

  

Studying VHF antenna placement on a naval platform.

  

Radiation pattern and surface currents of a microstrip patch array with corporate feed.

 

  

Establishing ICNIRP compliance zones for a vehicle-mounted TETRA antenna (382 MHz).

  

Characterisation of a horn-fed reflector antenna.

 

  

Computational model of a car with integrated windscreen antenna.

  

Radiation pattern and near field result obtained with the special windscreen analysis option in FEKO.