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Preview of FEKO 14.0 under Altair
HyperWorks
Dr. Ulrich Jakobus
Vice President – Electromagnetic Solutions
8 October 2015
Microwave Journal Webinar
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Vision of Altair
To radically change the way
organizations design products
and make decisions
James R. Scapa, Chairman & CEO, Altair
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Through A Unique Blend of Software and Services
Altair's corporate
structure is tightly
aligned with its
brand family
Engineering Simulation / Performance
Optimization Technology
Concept Design and
Development Technology
HPC and On-demand
Computing Technology
Product Engineering /
Development Consulting
Human-centered Industrial Design
and Product Strategy Consulting
LED products for the replacement of
fluorescent lighting
Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Altair HyperWorks Solver Technology
In June 2014 acquisition of EM Software & Systems with its electromagnetic
solver FEKO by Altair Engineering, Inc.
Now complete multiphysics offering through HyperWorks:
FEKO
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
FEKO Roadmap
Suite 7.0 Release May 2014
• FDTD solver, voxel mesher • MLFMM/PO hybrid solver
7.0.1 Feature Update September 2014
7.0.2 Feature Update February 2015
14.0 Release Expected Nov. 2015
First HWU
installations
January 2015
HWU = HyperWorks Units (Altair’s patented on-demand software licensing system)
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
FEKO 14.0 Salient Features
• Integration of FEKO into Altair HyperWorks
• Faster modelling of equivalent aperture sources with RL-GO
• Higher order basis function (HOBF) support for
• method of moments hybridised with the uniform theory of diffraction (MoM/UTD)
• method of moments with ray launching geometrical optics (MoM/RL-GO)
• Curvilinear wire segment mesh support for
• method of moments (MoM)
• multilevel fast multipole method (MLFMM)
• Finite difference time domain (FDTD) solver extended to support
• multiple configurations
• perfect magnetic conductor (PMC) boundary conditions
• intrinsic wire radius
• shared memory parallelisation
• Scripting (application framework) extensions
• Macro recording in CADFEKO
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
HyperWorks Integration
• Version number increase
• Jump from FEKO Suite 7.0 to FEKO 14.0
to align with HyperWorks 14.0
• Part of HyperWorks master installer
• Legacy / standalone installer still available
• HWU licensing (since FEKO 7.0.1)
• Legacy secfeko.dat licensing mechanism still
supported
• Help > About HyperWorks dialog
• Link to Altair website
• Link to Client Center / Altair Connect
• FEKO now also part of HyperWorks Student Edition
Replacing FEKO LITE
14.0
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Transformation of Aperture Excitations for RL-GO
• Often Model Decomposition is advised for RL-GO to reduce effort
• The computational requirements of RL-GO simulations with aperture excitations
are proportional to the number of near field points used in the source
• A new transform automatically converts an equivalent aperture excitation into its
corresponding spherical mode representation
Depending on the size of the aperture, there are limitations as how close the source
can be placed to the geometry (FEKO will check for this)
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Horn Fed Reflector Antenna RL-GO Example
A large number of near field samples are needed around the horn to represent
the aperture excitation accurately
The transformation of the aperture excitation to spherical modes reduces the simulation
time from several days to only 3 min!
1) Geometry at 12.5 GHz 2) Simulate the horn with MoM to
capture the near-fields to use as an
aperture excitation for the reflector
3) The reflector is excited with
the equivalent aperture source
and simulated with RL-GO
4) Aperture will be converted into the
spherical mode representation
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Recap: Curvilinear triangle support for MoM and MLFMM
• HOBF (Higher Order Basis Functions) on curvilinear meshes for MoM
and MLFMM introduced in FEKO Suite 6.3 (Oct. 2013)
Number of metallic triangles: RWG = 3 774 HOBF 3.5 = 72
Number of basis functions: RWG = 5 661 HOBF 3.5 = 1 296
4.4 times fewer unknowns
19 times less memory
Similar run-times
Sphere radius = 1 λ
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Introduction of Curvilinear Wire Meshes
• Supported for MoM and MLFMM solvers
• Mesh import formats
• NASTRAN, ANSYS CDB, and Abaqus
• Mesh export formats
• NASTRAN, Gerber, and AutoCAD (DXF)
• Display in GUI fully supported
• Mesh elements
• Ports
• Mesh information
• Currents and charges
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Example for Curvilinear Wire Meshes
• Helix with 20 turns
• radius 2.5 mm
• height 50 mm
• wire radius 0.2 mm
• Near field computed 5 mm from the axis
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Example for Curvilinear Wire Meshes
• Near field computed 5 mm from 20 turn helix
• Need more linear segments to achieve the same accuracy
• 153 curvilinear segments
• 397 linear segments
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Higher Order Basis Functions Extensions
• Higher order basis functions supported for the
MoM and MLFMM since FEKO Suite 6.2
• Curvilinear meshes supported since Suite 6.3
• Second order curvilinear triangles with 6 vertex points
• Support for higher order MoM in the MoM/PO
hybrid method added in FEKO Suite 7.0
• Support for higher order MoM in the MoM/UTD and
MoM/RL-GO hybrid methods added in FEKO 14.0
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Example for Higher Order Basis Function Extensions
Supported for MoM/UTD
• First order (RWG) vs higher order MoM with UTD example
• Electrically large flare and circular plate with electric dipole point source
• UTD region: PEC flare, bottom width 8, 3 unmeshed plates
• MoM region: PEC plate, radius
• 1232 triangles (RWG) vs 32 triangles (order 3.5)
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) Extensions
• Support for multiple configurations
• Perfect magnetic conductor (PMC) boundaries
• Open and perfect electric conductor (PEC) boundaries
already supported in FEKO Suite 7.0
• Intrinsic wire radius
• User can opt to let the solver determine the wire radius
to improve FDTD stability (e.g. 0.208 times voxel size)
• Zero impedance loads (just currents at port)
• Port without source / load treated as short circuit
• Similar to the MoM
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Scripting & Automation History
• FEKO Suite 6.1 release
• Added dataset Lua scripting
• Focus on post-processing of results
in POSTFEKO
• FEKO Suite 6.2 release
• Added POSTFEKO automation (e.g. for
automatic report generation)
• FEKO Suite 6.3 release
• Dataset refactor
• Third party integration (e.g. Optenni Lab)
• Interactive dialogs
• CADFEKO automation for geometry
creation only
Example of a customised dialog
Example list of
application macros
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Scripting (Application Framework) Extensions
• Completed CADFEKO API in FEKO 14.0
• API now also supports solution requests, etc.
• Any action in CADFEKO can now be performed through scripting
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Macro Recording in CADFEKO
• Interface changes
• Ribbon
• Status bar
• Script editor
• Workflow
• Start recording from CADFEKO
• Perform actions in CADFEKO
• Stop the recording
• View the recorded script in the script editor
• Modify the script if required
• Run the script to repeat performed actions
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Macro Recording in CADFEKO
• Useful for
• performing repetitive actions – record once and repeat using script
• advanced / custom actions – record and extend script
• getting started with scripting
• learn syntax
• become familiar with API objects and properties
Other GUI Features in FEKO 14.0
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
CADFEKO
• Option to rotate the elements of circular/cylindrical antenna arrays
• Can create arrays with sequentially rotated arrays directly in a single setup
• Previously possible through multiple (custom) arrays
spiral
notched patches horn antennas
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
CADFEKO
• CAD exchange library updated
• Allows the latest CAD file formats to be imported and exported
• Supported: ACIS R25, CATIA V5 R24 (V5 – 6R2014), NX 9, Pro/E / Creo 3.0
• Discontinued: CATIA V5 Release 6 (from 2001)
• Gerber, ODB++ and 3Di import on Linux
• Selection of layers to import
• Gerber, ODB++, 3Di or AutoCAD files
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
CAD Handling Performance Improvements
• General improvements to loading and handling of CAD and
complex/detailed models with larger number of parts:
• More responsive GUI in CADFEKO
• Reduced times to load the models
• Improved handling including faster zooming, selection, etc.
.cfx file (MByte) Opening speedup
Device 23 400%
PCB model 62 22%
Car model 95 980%
Device with anatomical
mesh model 23 27%
FSS with large number
of elements 125 280%
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Extended CADFEKO Workflows
• Many dialogues in CADFEKO now
include the icon next to dropdown
menus
• Previously, dropdown menus needed
to populated prior, fixing the workflow
• In 14.0, pressing the icon will offer a
new workflow, where the required entities
can be created directly from the dialogue
to populate the dropdown menu
• The new workflows are faster and more
intuitive
• Two examples show the functionality
When adding a
source to a
configuration, the
port can be
created directly
from the dialogue
by pressing
When creating a layered dielectric, the
materials can be created directly from
the dialogue by pressing
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
POSTFEKO
• Display relative phase of ideal receiving antenna
• “Received signal phase” quantity
• Hide a trace entry in the 2D legend
• Leave trace text empty
• Display impedance data for loads and general networks on Smith charts
• Add math scripts and imported data to empty project
• 3D views, 2D graphs can be added for these results
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Default fonts User-defined fonts
CADFEKO and POSTFEKO
• 3D view font settings can be modified
• Settings > Preferences
Default settings dialog
Other Electromagnetic Solver
Features in FEKO 14.0
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Other Electromagnetic Solver Features
• Improved performance and stability
• Latest libraries, math libraries and compilers
• GPU CUDA version 7.0 support (Windows and Linux)
• Intel MPI library for Windows upgraded to version 5.0
Impact of these upgrades for parallel MoM run:
• FEKO 7.0: 31.7 GLFOPS per process
• FEKO 14.0: 42.9 GLFOPS per process 35% faster!
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Braided Shield Models for Cable Harnesses
• Cable transfer impedances (ZT) and transfer admittances (YT)
• Internal database containing 26 popular cable types
• User-defined input
• E.g. from datasheets or measurements
• Different cable shield formulations supported
• Supported cable shield types
• Schelkunoff (solid) model
• ZT
• Since FEKO Suite 6.0
• Kley (braided) formulas
• ZT and YT
• Since FEKO Suite 6.0
• Vance (braided) formulas
• ZT and YT
• New in FEKO 14.0
CADFEKO Create
cable shield dialog
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Active RCS Calculations
• Mono-static and bi-static RCS calculations
• Traditional far field RCS computed with
where E0 is the incident plane wave field and Es represents the scattered field.
• Extension to “Active RCS” by including the radiated field from sources other than
plane waves in the model as part of Es
• Example application:
• RCS reduction by transmitting an active signal which intends to cancel the back-
scattered field
E0
Es
E0
Es
~
FEKO – HyperStudy Integration
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Overview of Altair HyperStudy
• Altair HyperStudy is a multi-disciplinary design exploration, study and
optimisation software
• Included methods are:
• Design of Experiments (DoE) helps engineers understand the relationship
between design variables and overall system performance
• Fit approach to create meta models to replace computationally expensive
simulations
• Traditional optimisation
• Stochastic Analysis
• Post-processing and data mining
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
FEKO – HyperStudy Integration
• Integration of FEKO into the HyperStudy
optimisation platform:
• FEKO model type
• Browse and add the *.cfx file to the HyperStudy project
• Direct import of geometric design variables
• Standard response extraction in HyperStudy
• Impedance, gain, efficiency, etc.
• Extract from ASCII files e.g. *.out file, *.efe, *.hfe, *.ffe
or exported Touchstone files
• Post-processing of responses using Lua:
• Extraction of responses can also be controlled with Lua
scripts
• Default script automatically generated
• User modification necessary for custom responses
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Planar Monopole Optimisation – HyperStudy
• At 433 MHz, the planar monopole is relatively small (8 x 4.25 cm):
• A tuning circuit and trimmer capacitor are needed to match the antenna
• HyperStudy is used to optimise the performance of the antenna
• 3 geometric variables are considered X, Y, T for the initial full factorial DoE; S11 is used as the
response
• A Fit response surface is generated using radial basis functions (RBF) based on the DoE data
• The optimisation is performed on the Fit using a genetic algorithm (GA)
• The optimised design offers a 15% improvement in bandwidth and 32%
improvement in radiation efficiency over the initial design
trimmer
capacitor
feed port and
matching circuit
X
Y
T
HyperStudy Fit surface
GA optimisation convergence
Extended FEKO – Optenni Lab
Interface
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Optenni Lab
• Optenni Lab is a leading professional matching circuit synthesis and
optimisation software for solving all matching problems in the RF chain
within wireless devices
• Optenni Lab can optimise broadband, multiband, multiport and tunable
matching circuits for antennas, filters, amplifiers, switches, tuners and
other RF components
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Optenni Lab Plugin Improvements
• Redesigned the forms using callbacks
• Interactive dialogs that update based on choices selected
• More advanced automation integration
• Number of Touchstone file samples can be set
• Improved handling of loads
• Better feedback through the message window
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Optenni Lab Plugin Improvements
• New run mode functionality supporting new workflows:
1) Run simulation and launch Optenni Lab
2) Use existing Touchstone file (simulation already run)
3) Provide a Touchstone file
• Workflows 1) and 2) will automatically reconnect all ports when
transferring matching circuit files back to FEKO
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
• Optenni Lab multiport matching:
• Simultaneous matching of antenna elements can be applied, while reducing
coupling < -15 dB between the antenna elements
• FEKO - Optenni Lab link workflow:
• Touchstone files for the unmatched antenna are automatically sent to Optenni Lab
• Bands, efficiency and coupling goals are defined in Optenni Lab and matching
circuits are calculated
• Circuit information is sent back to FEKO and automatically connected to the ports
using general networks
Optenni Lab Matching – WCDMA, WLAN, BT Module
matching circuit configuration
general network schematic antenna geometry
WCDMA WLAN, BT
coupling < -15 dB
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Parameter Sweep Plugin
• Application macro scripts available for
parameter sweep (more intuitive than
Grid Search in OPTFEKO)
• CADFEKO setup script gives the user a list
of variables to derived from the model to
select for geometric grid search investigation
• POSTFEKO script combines simulation
results to plot responses as a function of the
geometry
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
• Application macro to calculate the co-site Interference matrix
• Maxhold over frequency band for worst case coupling
• 3 threshold levels – negligible, medium and strong coupling – can be set to the
required value
• Can also be used to illustrate inter-element coupling in arrays with large number of
elements
Co-site Interference Analysis – Lua Plugin
VHF blade
antenna – 126 MHz
UHF antenna,
310 MHz, blade
L-band blade
antenna – 1.09 GHz
GPS - 1.57 GHz,
circular patch
Negligible coupling - < 60 dB
Coupling between -50 & -60 dB
Strong coupling > -50 dB
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Multi-Port Post-Processing Plugin
• Variation of load impedances (impact on reflection coefficients at other
ports or also near and far fields) as part of the post-processing phase in
POSTFEKO without the need to run the FEKO solver for each changed
load configuration!
Licensing and Installation
Changes in FEKO 14.0
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
Installation Changes in FEKO 14.0
• Integration into the HyperWorks Master Installer
• Administrative rights no longer required for FEKO installations
on Windows
• Exception are parallel runs using multiple Windows computers
• Support for 32-bit architecture is being phased out
• Support for Windows XP has been stopped
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
HWU Draw – New Unlimited Solver Node Licensing
• Installations for FEKO 14.0 are available for both legacy licensing
(i.e. “secfeko.dat” license file) and also for HWU (HyperWorks Units).
• HyperWorks 14.0 introduces a new licensing scheme named
Unlimited Solver Node in addition to the existing Per Job Licensing
scheme, to give more flexibility to customers for solver runs:
• Per Job Licensing: 25 HWUs for 1 to 4 cores, with decay as more
cores are used and also decay as more concurrent
jobs are run
• Solver Node Licensing: 30 HWUs for 1st node, with decay as more
nodes are used (number of cores per node and
number of concurrent jobs irrelevant)
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
HyperWorks Student Edition
• HyperWorks Student Edition replaces FEKO LITE
• Student Edition supports much larger models than FEKO LITE
Model Elements Old Limit
FEKO LITE
New Limit
Student Edition
Number of wires in CADFEKO 40 100
Number of faces in CADFEKO 40 200
Number of mesh wire segments 500 2 500
Number of mesh triangles 500 25 000
Number of tetrahedral volume elements 300 250 000
Number of voxel elements (FDTD) 10 000 500 000
Solution Specification
Near-field observation points per request 1 000 10 000
Far-field observation directions per request 703 20 000
Number of frequency values 10 20
Solution Metrics
Main memory that can be allocated by FEKO kernel 20 MByte 1 GByte
Number of processes for parallel FEKO version 2 4
Total run-time (wall-clock time) of FEKO kernel 10 min 20 min
Number of adaptive frequency sampling points 10 101
Number of simultaneously active excitations 5 20
Number of optimisation variables (degrees of freedom) 2 3
Number of optimisation steps (iterations) 20 50
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
FEKO now available in Altair’s HPC CAE Environment
Traditional
HPC CAE
HWUL
Physical Appliance
HWUL
Virtual Appliance
Unlimited Vendors
Limited Benefits
Single Vendor
Unlimited Benefits
Single Vendor
Unlimited Benefits
Copyright © 2015 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.
For more information visit
www.altairhyperworks.com/feko