Tagged: CENOS

CENOS Launches Affordable And Easy-to-use Simulation Software For Antenna Design

Over the past few months we have posted a few times about the beta of CENOS, a new antenna modelling and simulation design package. Recently CENOS has exited it's beta testing phase, and they have put out a press release about the first release.

Of most importance is that the software is affordable for hobbyist's, with a 10-day free trial and subscription price of €20 (US$25) per month for hobbyist use (no live engineering support).

Electromagnetics simulation software company CENOS (Riga, Latvia) continues on its mission to democratize simulation software by releasing its newest application designed for radio frequency and antenna design engineers. CENOS released its first electromagnetics simulation software focused on the induction heating applications in 2017 and it proved to be a success - mainly because of the simple and straightforward user experience and the specialization and focus on a single industry. After a year of development and testing in close cooperation with its avid beta-tester community, the Antenna Design simulation software was finally released for public use at the end of April, 2021.

CENOS Antenna Design is an intuitive FEM-based software that helps engineers to speed up RF antenna design, it solves Maxwell’s equations directly with no simplifications or limitations. Therefore, the results provided by CENOS are accurate for wide ranges of geometries and antennas, including very complex geometries. For instance, the software is good for high Q, multi-port simulations with arbitrary 3D structures. It is specialized for the simulation of microstrip- and wire-type antennas that include various geometries (fractal, helix, horn, loop, slot, patch, spiral, and others), as well as dipole and monopole antennas.

CENOS co-founder Dr. phys. Mihails Scepanskis: “Two years ago we launched a specialized induction heating simulation software to cover the growing demand in the SME sector - smaller equipment manufacturers, tooling shops, and production plants. Following the success in the low-frequency applications, we decided to move to the microwaves with the same mission - to democratize the simulation software, make it accessible for every engineer. I believe, it is an awkward situation in the market - engineers have to choose either to pay tons of money for enterprise-type generic simulation packages to utilize just a fraction of their functionality or to use over-simplified 1D approximations with the hobbyist-level software. With CENOS we have leveraged the power of open-source algorithms to break the status quo - to deliver a full-functionality FEM software for price-sensitive business users and individuals.”

CENOS Antenna Design is free to try for 10 days, after which the users can choose from the two subscription plans - for an individual or business use, starting from 20 euros per month ($25). The business version includes the features that help to automate and speed up simulation processes and has more integrations with the existing software and, most importantly, it has a live customer support through the chat and video calls. More features are planned to be added in 2021 and thus the prices may be increased over time, so now it is a good moment to subscribe and get all the future updates for a lower price.

The company name CENOS stands for “Connecting ENgineering Open Source” highlighting the new software approach they invented. It is a platform that connects the best of community-driven open-source algorithms into one seamless user experience and since it is a desktop software - the data do not leave the owner’s computer. CENOS was founded in 2017 by 3 PhDs in physics and mathematics who committed themselves to the democratization of the simulation software by making it easy, affordable, and secure for every engineer. CENOS is a startup, funded by the leading San Francisco early-stage investor ‘500 Startups’, the leading B2B European accelerator Startup Wise Guys, and the cohort of the Baltic business angels.

CENOS offers a 10-day trial, follow the link to sign up: https://www.cenos-platform.com/antenna-design

CENOS Screenshots

CENOS Antenna Design and Simulation Software Looking for Testers

Back in March 2020 we posted about CENOS, a company creating a new antenna modelling and simulation design package. Back then they were offering applications to beta test the software for free. CENOS has now reached V1.0 status, and they are now wanting to enroll another 300 testers. The benefit to the testers is that they will receive a 90% lifetime discount on the software, and testers who provide lots of active feedback will be granted free licenses.

CENOS Antenna Design version 1.0 will be available for closed testing starting from March 17, 2021.

During the free 14-day testing trial, users are expected to share their feedback about the software and usability, thus making an impact on further software development. 

In reward, they will get a generous discount or lifetime-free-licenses (for best contribution), once the software is available for public use (we expect to launch it shortly after rigorous testing completes).

More details will be announced on March 17!
 
Sign up here:
Software benefits
 
​CENOS is fast-to-learn and easy-to-use specialized antenna design simulation software for budget-sensitive customers.

CENOS integrates FreeCAD geometry editor to handle geometry of any complexity, provides built-in utilities for handy design of microstrip antennas and arrays, feed networks, wire antennas (including import of NEC files), and arbitrary 3D structures. FreeCAD also allows to import CAD files from external editors like Autodesk Inventor or similar.

CENOS ensures automatic meshing, as well as allows building manual mesh of any detalization level in the specially designed FreeCAD workspace.

For antenna calculation, the current software version utilizes FEM solver to provide accurate simulation for geometries of any complexity, including multi-port, high Q and other cases. Already now, CENOS R&D is pointing to combining the FEM solver with MoM and FDTD methods to provide a unique, optimized (fast and accurate) solution for any particular case.

CENOS provides very powerful visualization capabilities that includes full visualization of fields and graphs powered by Paraview, spreadsheet for data like S11, VSWR, reflection coefficient, etc, and pdf report.

That all makes CENOS a good alternative to well-known general purpose software like HFSS, CST, FEKO and Comsol for budget-sensitive customers looking for specialized antenna design simulation software.
Software functionality
• One-stop software: from CAD geometry to full visualization of results and analysis
• Desktop (on-premises) installation for Windows 7-10
• CENOS leverages open-source tools to ensure full stack of CAD/CAE software: FreeCAD, GetDP, ParaView
• User experience optimized for RF antenna design
• Supports the use of CAD geometry files prepared by any design program (.step or .iges formats)
• Pre-defined templates for basic antenna geometries
• Full-stack geometry editor powered by FreeCAD
• Material database, possibility to add and save custom materials

Simulation capabilities
• Wide range of antennas, antenna arrays, geometries of any complexity, inhomogeneous structure
• Finite element method (FEM) solver optimized for high frequencies
• Lumped port type, multiple ports (feeds) with phase shifts
• Frequency diapason (wide, multiband) 
• Ports: S11, VSWR, power, reflection coefficient, impedance, reactance, and resistance
• Fairfield pattern: directivity (gain), radiation intensity
• Antenna: Electric field, magnetic field, vector plots 
• Frequency-dependent dielectric constant and loss tangent
 
… all you need for antenna design in an easy-to-use way, because this is the software specialized on RF antenna design with full spectrum of necessary functionality. And we are constantly working to add more value.
 
Hardware requirements
You don’t need a supercomputer to run antenna design simulations with CENOS. Intel i5 or i7 (or similar) are good enough. The faster processor you have, the faster calculation will go.

We recommend to have at least 16Gb RAM to calculate 3D cases, 32Gb is better. Actually, the more RAM you have, the bigger (more complex) 3D geometries you can simulate. Some of our customers use 128 Gb machines and that’s like for rocket-science-cases. MS Windows OS.
CENOS Antenna Simulation