Microwave Journal
www.microwavejournal.com/articles/22034-delcross-announces-savant-version-40-software

Delcross announces Savantâ„¢ Version 4.0 software

April 16, 2014

Delcross Technologies announced the Version 4.0 release of its Savant™ software for modeling the installed performance of antennas on electrically large vehicles. Among the many new features in this release are multi-bounce edge-diffraction rays that improve accuracy by modeling antenna interactions with shadowed portions of the platform, an integrated workflow with CST STUDIO SUITE® 2014 for importing full-wave antenna models for hybrid simulation, a new Scene Tree capability to enable articulated geometry assemblies and a new feature for generating parametric CAD models and platform parts.

With the introduction of Savant Version 4.0, Delcross provides the industry’s only commercial asymptotic electromagnetic (EM) analysis software to extend the Shooting and Bouncing Rays (SBR) simulation approach with Physical Theory of Diffraction (PTD), Uniform Theory of Diffraction (UTD), and Creeping Waves. “With the release of Savant 4.0, “ states Delcross Chief Scientist and co-founder, Dr. Robert Kipp, “Delcross Technologies further cements its position as the leading provider of SBR-based simulation tools by continuing to fulfill a vision that SBR means much more than its original interpretation of using geometrical optics (GO) to efficiently adapt physical optics (PO) to multi-bounce configurations. Rather, it is a broad framework for modeling high-fidelity platform geometries by deploying the full panoply of UTD ray techniques to impress currents on the scattering body, thereby maximizing accuracy while retaining the scalability benefits of traditional SBR.”

Savant simulations are configured through an intuitive and powerful graphical user interface (GUI) capable of importing and simulating complex vehicle and platform geometries that may be hundreds to thousands of wavelengths in size. Savant also leverages graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware for simulation acceleration, utilizing both scientific computing and consumer-grade NVIDIA graphics adapters. For customers using high performance computing (HPC) systems, Savant simulations can be massively accelerated through a Message Passing Interface (MPI) implementation that extracts maximum benefit from multi-core and GPU-accelerated HPC cluster architectures.

A workflow combining both full-wave and asymptotic EM analysis in hybrid simulation provides vertical RF systems integrators with accurate, efficient and error-free modeling of antenna systems integrated on large vehicles. Savant Version 4.0 introduces a seamless workflow with CST STUDIO SUITE® to import full-wave antenna modeling results from CST’s 3D full-wave time- and frequency-domain EM solvers. Imported antenna simulation data and geometry from CST STUDIO SUITE can be placed on an electrically large vehicle CAD model in Savant and used for hybrid simulation of the installed antenna performance under the influence of the actual vehicle geometry.

Several enhancements have been added to Savant’s ability to import and develop CAD models. A Scene Tree capability provides aggregation of multiple imported CAD subassemblies that can be translated or rotated. The Scene Tree can be used to define and parameterize subassembly positions like prop, rotor or engine rotations, relative spacing between vehicle geometries, or antenna placement changes. In addition, CAD subassemblies may be defined from basic parametric shapes like cylinders, cones, bricks and paraboloids, without the need to externally create and import them.

With the release of Savant Version 4.0, Delcross also introduces Delcross Acceleration Tokens (DATs) for flexible acceleration and distributed computing options. DATs enable the use of multiple GPUs in parallel on a single workstation for significant acceleration gains. In addition, DATs can be deployed on Linux computing clusters employing Message Passing Interface (MPI) to further accelerate simulation. Cluster nodes with GPUs can also be enabled by DATs to reduce simulations from hours to seconds, making possible accelerations on the order of 1000x over single workstations.

A host of enhancements to existing technologies have also been added to Savant Version 4.0. These features include: enhanced robustness for creeping wave simulation, an improved curvature extraction capability for tessellated CAD models, multi-threaded PTD wedge computation, the ability to import CAD models in non-metric units, improved GPU performance and many new GUI, diagnostic and data presentation improvements.

Delcross is now providing Savant Version 4.0 to customers. Windows and Linux versions are available. Delcross Savant customers with a current software maintenance contract will receive this upgrade free of charge. Savant is also available through CST AG, a Delcross worldwide sales and technical support partner for the EMIT and Savant software packages.