Features in this issue QUARTERLY: June 2008 Review of FEKO

QUARTERLY: June 2008
Features in this issue
• Feature preview of
FEKO Suite 5.4.
• New multi-core
CPU licencing
scheme.
As always, your comments on the quarterly are welcomed. If you would like to contribute an article,
please send it to quarterly@emss.co.za.
Review of FEKO Sessions at ACES 2008
Generation of Calibration Tables for Direction Finding Antennas using FEKO
Anthony Bellion 1,2,3, Cyrille Le Meins 1, Anne JulienVergonjanne 2, and Thierry Monédière 3 - 1THALES
Communications, France, 2XLIM DPT-C 2S 2 UMR
CNRS 6172 ENSIL, France, 3XLIM DPT-OSA UMR
CNRS 6172
This paper focus on the generation of calibration
tables for direction finding (DF) antennas using FEKO.
Indeed, calibration table realisation for direction finding antennas is generally a very long and complex
manipulation, depending on angle’s precision and
number of frequencies. Moreover, in some cases,
e.g. direction finding antennas on complex carriers
(boat, aircraft, helicopter,…), it can be a very complex
and expensive manipulation. In the case of an interferometer, this study compares differential phases
obtained from simulations with FEKO and differential
phases measured on a direction finding antenna in
the frequency band 20 – 1000 MHz. This work estimates the accuracy of direction finding antennas by
using a simulated calibration table instead of a measured calibration table. The results show that the
simulated calibration table permits obtaining results
with a great efficiency and thus saving a lot of time,
which is advantageous for industrial applications.
Direction finding antenna model for 3 arrays of 5 dipoles each.
Estimated Angle (°)
• Review of FEKO
sessions at ACES
2008 conference.
The 24th Annual Review of Progress in Applied Computational Electromagnetics (ACES) was held in
Niagara Falls, Canada, in March 2008. During this conference EMSS USA hosted an international FEKO
users meeting and contributed to the conference with two FEKO sessions where authors presented their
innovative FEKO applications. In this issue of the FEKO quarterly we recap some of these presentations
and report on the user meeting. A short segment is devoted to an “appetiser” that highlights some features to be released with FEKO Suite 5.4.
Estimated Angle (°)
Inside this issue:
Angle of Arrival (°)
Angle of Arrival (°)
(a) Measured
(b) Simulated
Comparison of direction finding functions at 884 MHz.
Page 2
Review of FEKO Sessions at ACES 2008 … (2)
Simulations of a Shaped Dielectric Lens Antenna by FEKO
Yosuke Tajima, and Yoshihide Yamada - Department of Electrical
and Electronic Engineering, National Defence Academy, Japan
25° scan
“This analysis
boresight
utilised the SEP to
model the dielectric
lens and the MLFMM
The authors have designed and verified a millimeter band dielectric lens antenna at 60 GHz
which is also suitable for wide angle beam
scanning. Various factors were considered in
shaping the lens before numerical analysis was
performed. This analysis
Lens,
utilised the surface
εr = 1.94
equivalence principle
tan δ = 7.5x10-4
(SEP) to model the dielectric lens and the
to make the
simultaneous
simulation of the
feed horn and lens
possible. ”
Scanning positions of corrugated
horn antenna
MLFMM to make Absorber,
the simultaneous εr = 2
tan δ = 1
simulation of the
feed horn and
lens possible. Simulation details
that were investigated include
intensity and phase distribution
across the aperture of the antenna
to ensure as flat a phase distribution as possible.
E-field in front of, inside and behind the lens
Other papers presented at the FEKO sessions of ACES 2008
Since the first special session for FEKO modelling and analysis at the 2004 ACES conference, the quantity of the presentations and the range of different applications have increased dramatically. The following list of papers were also presented in the FEKO sessions of the 2008 ACES conference. Their titles
testify to the fact that FEKO is used in industry and academia for a widely diverse range of problems.
“Since the first
•
Space Mapping Optimization of Microwave Structures with FEKO, Slawomir Koziel, and John W.
Bandler
•
The Application of FEKO Software to Ground Electronic Warfare Scenarios, Jason P. Dauby
•
Design and Analysis of Waveguide Model-Spectrometer, Wolfgang K. J. Mahler, and Thomas Eibert
•
New FEKO Modelling Capabilities: Waveguide Ports with Dielectrics, Fast MLFMM Based NearField Calculations, Integrated Network Modelling, and Dielectric GO, Ulrich Jakobus, Marianne
Bingle, Marlize Schoeman, Johann J. van Tonder, and Frank Illenseer
•
Comparison of Three Major MoM Codes for a Large Wire-Grid ShipModel, Keith A. Lysiak
•
Low Sidelobe Polarization Tapers for Planar Antennas, Daniel W. Aten, Randy L. Haupt
•
Aircraft Antenna Modelling, Analysis and Testing Ground Plane Effects and Considerations, David
W. Estlick
•
Uniform Circular Array Active Element Radiation Patterns, FEKO Predictions vs. Measurements,
Craig Birtchner, and Constantine A. Balanis
•
Patch Antenna Modelling Issues Using Commercial Software, William O. Coburn, Steven Weiss, and
Canh Ly
special session for
FEKO modelling and
analysis at the 2004
ACES conference,
the quantity of the
presentations and
the range of different
applications have
increased
dramatically.”
Review of FEKO Sessions at ACES 2008 … (3)
•
A Study of Large Cylindrical Arrays of UHF Patch Dipole Antenna Elements, James D. Krieger and
Alan J. Fenn
•
VHF Antenna Modelling for Rocket Application, César De La Jara
•
Numerical Radar Cross Section Simulation and Analysis of Complex Targets in FEKO, Ryan C.
Solomon, Hank Leong and Yahia M..M. Antar
•
Design and Analysis of a Novel Pent-band Antenna for Handheld Applications, Shirook Ali, Houssam Kanj, Dong Wang, and Wen Geyi
•
Modelling of Dual-Polarized Frequency Independent Antennas, Dejan S. Filipovic and Tom Cencich
•
Geometry Capture and Scattering Calculations of the VFY218, Praveen Anumolu, Robert Christ,
and Ronald Pirich
•
Analysis of Patch Antennas Using FEKO, Julie A. Huffman
•
FEKO Simulations of an Antenna mounted on a Rear Window of a Car, Y.Yamada, N.Michishita,
T.Sato, and K.Ogino
•
Improving Return Loss of Bi-Conical Antennas, Mohammed A. Quddus
•
Low Profile Magneto-Dielectric Ground Plane for Ultra-Wideband Antennas, Faruk Erkmen, ChiChih Chen and John L. Volakis
Page 3
Feature Preview of FEKO Suite 5.4
FEKO Suite 5.4 is due to be released soon and will
bring the customer a range of new and improved
features. Some of these features that customers
•
can look forward to include:
•
•
•
•
•
Waveguide ports are fully specifiable in •
CADFEKO. Including a waveguide port will
be as simple as selecting a face of a model
and clicking on the appropriate button.
The primary propagating mode will auto- •
matically be computed for the selected
waveguide port.
Specification of symmetry is fully supported
in CADFEKO. The model is still drawn as a
full 3D model, but the CADFEKO mesher
will obey symmetry specifications to create •
appropriate meshes for the exploitation of
symmetry.
The MoM/FEM hybrid has been parallelised. Users will now be able to solve large
MoM/FEM problems in parallel for all solu- •
tion phases.
Waveguide ports can now be included in
models where PO is used to model electrically large surfaces. In reflector antenna
analysis the horn antenna may be fed with
a waveguide source.
•
Infinite general periodic boundary conditions are available for the simulation of
large periodic structures, e.g. antenna arrays, FSS or 2D MoM problems.
DXF geometry import filter for CADFEKO.
Various CAD export filters. In addition to
Parasolid CADFEKO now also exports ACIS,
STEP, IGES, Catia v4 and Catia v5 CAD
formats.
Importing of CAD models with faults and
fault highlighting. In the past CADFEKO
refused to import CAD data where the models contained geometry faults. This is now
allowed, with features added to help find
the faulty elements.
Stitching method for CAD manipulation.
Surfaces of adjacent geometry faces which
are in close proximity to each other, but
that do not touch, can now be stitched
together to form a continuous surface.
Optimisation masks that allow users to
optimise a result to a pattern, rather than
just to a single value. E.g. optimising a
microstrip filter to have S11 equal to -15dB
in the passband and S21 of -20 dB in the
stopband.
Printing, image export and copy to clipboard are supported for model views in
CADFEKO.
“Waveguide ports
are fully specifiable
in CADFEKO.”
New Multi-core CPU Licencing Scheme
Exhibitions
Performance of CPUs have traditionally improved with production technologies
that place more transistors on a single CPU and clocking them at ever higher
rates. Gains to be made with these methods have diminished in recent years as
the limits of silicon physics are approached and processor manufacturers turned
to placing multiple cores on the same CPU. Multi-core CPUs allow the execution
of several instruction lists in parallel, each using its own uninterrupted thread.
FEKO users traditionally gained simulation performance in the same way that
CPU manufacturers did, by higher clock speeds from a single processor. Servers
or cluster computers have also been available for a long time to enhance simulation abilities with FEKO’s very efficient parallel processing methods. FEKO was in
the past also very efficiently supporting multi-core environments (e.g. by using
specific Intel libraries), but a parallel licence was required then to support as
many parallel processes as the user wanted to run (e.g. parallel 4-process licence for a quad-core CPU).
The licencing policy of FEKO will change with FEKO Suite 5.4: The licencing is no
longer per parallel process, but per CPU. All cores of a CPU are then automatically supported! This means that with a sequential licence of FEKO one can run a
parallel FEKO job on a multi-core CPU with as many parallel processes as there
are cores in this CPU (e.g. 4 processes on a quad-core CPU). In a network or
server environment the same reasoning applies: A customer
CPU
with e.g. a cluster of 3 nodes each having a quad-core CPU had
to have a parallel 12-process FEKO licence in the past. Now
Core Core
with FEKO Suite 5.4 a parallel 3-CPU licence is sufficient!
Core Core
FEKO will be exhibited at many conferences this quarter, including the following:
15 - 20 June
IEEE MTT-S, Atlanta,
Georgia, USA
5 - 11 July
IEEE AP-S and URSI,
San Diego, California, USA
21 - 25 July
EUROEM, Lausanne,
Switzerland
18 - 22 August
IEEE EMC, Detroit,
Michigan, USA
8 - 12 September
EMC Europe, Hamburg,
Germany
CPU
CPU
CPU
Core Core
Core Core
Core Core
Core Core
Core Core
Core Core
Note that customers with existing sequential or parallel licences will automatically benefit from this feature: Just by
upgrading to the FEKO Suite 5.4 executables, an existing sequential FEKO licence will run on all cores, and an old pprocess parallel licence will automatically become a new p-CPU
parallel licence.
3 CPU Server / Cluster
Sequential
Parallel 3 CPU licence sufficient to run 12 processes
FEKO licence
on a 3 node cluster with quad-core CPUs.
supporting 4
process parallel
run on a quad- The FEKO team believes that multi-core CPUs are becoming readily available and that the benefit of these processors
should now be passed on to our customers. Please contact your local distributor with questions about the new licore CPU
cencing scheme.
Comprehensive Electromagnetic Solutions
APPLICATIONS
• Antenna Design
• Antenna Placement
• True hybridisation of MoM/FEM, MoM/PO and
• EMC Analysis
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Principle for Multiple Dielectric Bodies
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FAST SOLUTIONS
• Parallel Processing
SOLUTION TECHNIQUES
• Method of Moments (MoM)
MoM/UTD
• MoM with Surface and Volume Equivalence
• Out-of-Core Solving
• Multi-Level Fast Multipole Method (MLFMM)
• Multilevel Fast Multipole Method (MLFMM)
• Finite Element Method (FEM)
• Physical Optics (PO)
• Geometrical Optics (GO)
• Uniform Theory of Diffraction (UTD)
• Solid models (Parasolid, ACIS, CATIA, Pro-E,
SERVICES
• Extended Service Contract
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• CAD Preparation
• Runtime Solutions
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MODEL IMPORT FORMATS
IGES, STEP, Unigraphics)
• Meshes (CADFEKO, FEMAP, NASTRAN, AutoCAD DXF, STL, PATRAN, ANSYS
ABAQUS, ASCII data format , GID)
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