SLIDES Altair 8oct15

Preview of FEKO 14.0 under Altair

HyperWorks

Dr. Ulrich Jakobus

Vice President – Electromagnetic Solutions

[email protected]

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


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


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


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)


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


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


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)


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


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


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


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


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


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


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)


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


Scripting & Automation History

• FEKO Suite 6.1 release

• Added dataset Lua scripting

• Focus on post-processing of results

in POSTFEKO


• Added POSTFEKO automation (e.g. for

automatic report generation)


• 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


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


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


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


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


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


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%


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


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


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


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!


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


• 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

Other Lua Plugins

(available on www.feko.info)

http://www.feko.info/


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


• 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


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


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


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)


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


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


For more information visit

www.altairhyperworks.com/feko

Documents

SLIDES Altair 8oct15