Global Student Competition for Electromagnetic Simulations

CAD drawing of the 2014 winning project, an Antenna Array.

Engineering students specializing in the electromagnetic simulation software FEKO have the chance to enter a global competition. The contest is open to all undergraduates and post-graduates working on a supervised project that focuses on electromagnetic engineering.

Last year’s winner was entitled “Design of a Patch Antenna Array for Beamforming Combined with Metamaterials at 5.8 GHz.” It was created by Gastón Ezequiel Pérez, an electronic engineering student from the Universidad Tecnológica Nacional (Buenos Aires, Argentina). The project outlined how every design decision of a systematic planar array system was governed by electromagnetic simulations.

Winning Antenna Array prototype being measured.

This array system was designed as an on-board satellite application with high gain, low profile and dynamic orientation. As this system is designed to be deployed on a satellite, it must therefore meet requirements based on weight and volume. Pérez used Phased signals, for beamforming, to eliminate the drawbacks of changing mechanical parts and the reorientation of the radiation pattern.

"By using FEKO the students gain experience with a leading CEM tool that is widely used in industry. This experience will be very useful in their future engineering careers,” explains Altair Business Development Director, Dr Matthias Goelke.

“Since FEKO is now part of Altair HyperWorks, the competition is being launched through the Altair academic website (www.altairuniversity.com) which provides us with a much larger audience,” explains Gronum Smith, Marketing Director at Altair. “So we are expecting the competition to be even more popular than in the past. We receive entries from all over the world and have had winners from England, USA, Spain, South Africa and Italy since the competition began in 2003.”

The deadline for entering is September 30, 2015. Participants will receive further details after registration, such as requirements, guides and forums. This year’s prizes include a state-of-the-art laptop or attendance at an Altair ATC or ATCx conference series.

“We are happy to announce that FEKO has now been added to the Altair Support Forum,” adds Matthias. “Here students can discuss any issues they experience with FEKO, in real-time, whilst working on any of their projects. Our support engineers around the world are active on the forum so there is always someone available to answer any questions.”

Source Altair.