Overview of FEKO

What is FEKO?

FEKO is a comprehensive electromagnetic simulation software tool, based on state of the art computational electromagnetics (CEM) techniques. It enables users to 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

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)

Numerical methods

FEKO is based on the Method of Moments (MoM) and was the first commercial EM simulation software 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).
• Frequency dependent material parameter  specification: Debye, Cole-Cole, etc.
• SPICE circuit integration

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

Solver Platforms and OS

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 (512 MByte limitation) are available to academic institutions for teaching purposes
• 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