FEKO is an abbreviation derived from the German
phrase ''FEldberechnung bei Körpern mit beliebiger
Oberfläche'' (Field computations involving bodies
of arbitrary shape)
FEKO implements a frequency domain Method of Moments
(MoM) solution of the Electric Field Integral
Equation (EFIE). It allows both wire segments
and triangular surface current elements. In addition
it is fully hybridised with the Physical Optics
(PO) and Uniform Geometrical Theory of Diffraction
(UTD) -- flat plates only -- formulations at the
level of the interaction matrix.
Yes, once bought the FEKO licence will not expire.
The purchase also includes one year of support.
After this there is a maintenance fee for support
and updates. Note that, in general, the passwords
do expire and have to be renewed each year.
Yes. The course covers basic discussions on numerical
electromagnetics as well as how to set up and
solve problems in the FEKO environment. It may
be presented at EMSS in Stellenbosch or at the
clients own location.
FEKO is a numerical analysis program and are,
in itself, not sensitive to computer dates (apart
from the obvious dates associated with password
expiration, etc.) The operating systems it runs
on might, however, be sensitive to computer dates.
The current user interface runs only under MS-Windows
(both 95/98 and NT, but it is more stable under
NT). The preprocessor and the solution engine
runs on a number of platforms:
PC versions
MS-DOS, MS-Windows (both 95/98 and NT),
Linux, and OS/2 (version 2.0 and higher).
Unix versions
DEC, HP (PA 1.1 and PA 2.0 architectures)
IBM, SGI (32- and 64-bit versions), SUN
Parallel version
Cray T3E, HP, Parallel Linux clusters, SGI
Currently Windows NT on Dec Alpha platforms is
not supported.
The user interface requires a screen resolution
of at least 800x600 and preferably more than 256
colours. The memory depends on the size of the
model under consideration, but one should have
at least 15 MByte of allocatable memory. For the
solution engine, the memory requirement is entirely
dependent on the problem size. In general, a MoM
problem with N basis functions requires
16 N2 Bytes of memory. For metallic
surfaces, one unknown is associated with each
internal edge between two triangular patches.
Double this for dielectric surfaces and divided
by two for each plane of symmetry. (For closed
surfaces the number of internal edges are 1.5
times the number of triangles. For more complex
structures it is less than this.) For the PO formulation
the memory required is proportional to the number
of triangles rather than its square and is generally
less of a concern.
All 32-bit operating systems should support up
to 2 GByte. The HP versions are limited to 1.9
GByte. The 64-bit SGI and DEC versions support
263 bit -- practically all the memory
and disk space that is available. If the problem
size is larger than the amount of allocatable
RAM -- up to the limits described above -- a very
efficient out-of-core solution is used. (Note
that this is much more efficient than the system
paging.) In the parallel versions, each process
can address the amount of memory specified for
the sequential versions.
Many practical examples on different parallel
computer systems have shown that the scaling of
FEKO is very good. Typical parallel efficiencies
are 90% or higher. The out-of-core solution used
by the sequential version is very efficient and
can be used to solve large problems. However,
it cannot make optimum use of symmetry during
matrix fill, but this is usually not the largest
contributer to the solution time. Secondly it
cannot treat multiple right hand sides -- this
is a big disadvantage for calculations, such as
monostatic RCS computation, where a large number
of excitations are used. On 32-bit systems the
parallel version also have the advantage that
each process can address the same amount of memory
as the sequential version.
