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EM Software & Systems (EMSS) announced the release of FEKO Suite 5.4. As with every release of FEKO, this release includes new features in both the CAD interfaces and the solution engine. This release also introduces FEKO's new licensing scheme to exploit multicore processors to their full potential. The following is a highlights list of new features on FEKO Suite 5.4:

Improved specification of symmetry and excitations in CADFEKO

• Symmetry may be specified directly in CADFEKO. The full 3D model is constructed and no special geometry modifications are required to exploit geometric, electric or magnetic symmetry planes.
• Most excitation types and options can now be specified in CADFEKO, e.g. waveguide excitations, aperture excitation, spherical modes, impressed current excitations, edge excitations with respect to a UTD plate or infinite ground plane.
• Waveguide excitation has been simplified with geometry-independent reversal of the specification of propagation direction and the option to let FEKO automatically compute and excite the primary propagating mode for any waveguide shape.

Periodic boundary conditions

• Infinite general periodic boundary conditions in 1- and 2-dimensions have been added with an implementation that includes skewed lattice capabilities. Applications of periodic boundary conditions include frequency selective surface characterisation, large array analysis etc.

General non-radiating networks

• Connection options for general non-radiating networks and transmission lines have been extended so that they may be interconnected (cascaded) or connected to wire segments, vertices or edges in the model. Loads and excitations may also be applied to the ports of networks.
• General non-radiating Networks and Transmission lines are supported in CADFEKO.

CAD import/export

• The CAD import process has been made more robust and provides a number of new features for importing of meshes and geometry and the identification and fixing of errors that my exist in imported model elements.
• CAD export filters for ACIS, STEP, IGES, Catia v4 and v5 have been added (optionally purchased separately from FEKO).
• An import module for the import of DXF CAD geometry is available (optionally purchased separately from FEKO).

Solution methods

• Waveguide excitations may be used in a model where Physical Optics (PO) approximations are used.
• Parallelisation of the FEM/MoM and GO/MoM hybrid techniques (for shared and distributed memory platforms and multi-core systems).
• Improved interfacing with other tools, e.g. a new interface to CRIPTE from ESI Group for cable-coupling applications, and extension of existing interfaces (e.g. TICRA spherical modes, NASTRAN, etc.)
• Improved efficiency when computing near- and far-fields in a parallel solution using a small number of parallel processes.

Optimisation

• Optimisation with masks and parameter constrains is supported. This allows more flexible control of the optimisation process and better specification of optimisation goals.
• Farming out of optimisation iterations is supported (i.e. con-current solution of optimisation steps on different processors).

Licensing and platforms

• Changes to the licensing policy to optimally use multi-core processors. Licencing is now based on number of CPUs as opposed to number of cores or processes.
• Direct support for queueing systems (LSF, PBS and others), including integration into Windows CCS (compute cluster server).
• Porting to the IBM AIX PowerPC architecture

SOURCE: EM Software & Systems - S.A. (Pty) Ltd.

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