Free Computational Electromagnetic Modeling Codes

The software in this list is either free or available at a nominal charge and can be downloaded over the internet. Some of the codes require the user to register with the distributor's web site.

If you are familiar with other free EM modeling software that that should be added to this list, please send the name of the software, a hypertext link, and a brief description to CVEL-L@clemson.edu.

See also: Commercial Electromagnetic Modeling Codes

(Last update: October 11, 2009 )

Ansoft Codes - Student Version

Ansoft offers student versions of three of their electromagnetic modeling codes that can be downloaded free of charge:

Ansoft Designer SV is a feature-limited version of Ansoft's commercially distributed Ansoft Designer. Ansoft Designer SV contains a complete high-frequency linear circuit simulator, schematic and layout design entry, powerful design utilities, and post-processing, all integrated in an easy-to-use environment.

Maxwell SV is a subset of Ansoft's commercially distributed Maxwell 2D. It is software for two-dimensional, electromagnetic, and electrostatic-field simulation.

SIMPLORER® SV is a version of Ansoft's commercially distributed SIMPLORER 6.0 that is limited in the size of problems that can be solved. SIMPLORER is a sophisticated multi technology simulation package for design in automotive, aerospace, power electronics, drives and related areas.

ASAP - Antenna Scatterers Analysis Program

A general purpose user-oriented computer program for analysis of thin-wire structures in the presence of finite ground. An alternative to the Numerical Electromagnetics Code (NEC) for analyzing insulated or bare thin wire antenna structures over a lossy or perfect ground plane based on the moment method. Still available on the web at: http://raylcross.net/asap/index.html; however the web page has not been updated recently and the contact information no longer works.

Cassandra

A 3D EM modeling code that employs a parallel implementation of a solver based on the Multilevel Fast Multipole Algorithm (MLFMA). It was developed at the University of Ghent and the source code is distributed openly through Sourceforge. It is part of a package that also includes the 2D code, Nero2d.

EMAP

EMAP is a family of three-dimensional electromagnetic modeling codes developed at the University of Missouri-Rolla and Clemson University. Each code has different capabilities, but they all have a common easy to understand input file format. EMAP2 is a scalar FEM code, EMAP3 is a vector FEM code, and EMAP5 is a vector FEM/MoM code.

EM Explorer

EM Explorer (EMXP) is a 3D electromagnetic (EM) solver for plane wave scattering problems of periodic structures. It is largely based on the same method of Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD). Therefore it inherits most of FDTD's advantages and disadvantages. The advantages include simple & robust numerical algorithm, versatility for nearly any geometries, and good scalability of computing resources as a function of simulation volume size. The disadvantages are numerical dispersion and stability constraint due to the finite difference (FD) approximation to Maxwell's equations and explicit time marching algorithm.

emGine Environment

The emGine Environment is a full-wave 3D electromagnetic simulation environment solving Maxwell's equations in time-domain. It is used for the modeling of high-frequency electromagnetic field in microwave circuits, antennas, resonators, hollow waveguides, etc. For non-commercial and non-governmental usage, e.g., for academic, research and educational purposes, the tlmGine electromagnetic engine is provided for free in binary format (i.e., no source code is provided for the electromagnetic engine). The emGine GUI - the graphical user interface - is an open source project and is licensed under the tri-license MPL/GPL/LGPL.

Expert MiniNEC Classic

Amateur or student version of MININEC; available for free download.

Fasthenry, Fastcap, and Fastlap

Fasthenry, Fastcap, and Fastlap are static moment method codes designed to calculate the resistance, capacitance, and inductance of 3D geometries. They were developed at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics. A Windows port of Fasthenry and Fastcap can be found on a web page maintained by Enrico Di Lorenzo at http://www.fastfieldsolvers.com/.

FEKO LITE

A light version of the FEKO Software from EMSS. Limited to 300 unknowns. Requires user registration.

FEMM - Finite Element Method Magnetics

A set of programs running under win95/98/nt for the finite element solution of planar/axisymmetric problems in magnetostatics and low frequency magnetics. Includes a graphical preprocessor, a solver, and a graphical postprocessor. A free version is currently available. Authored by David Meeker, Ph.D. Available on the web at: http://femm.foster-miller.net/

IBM Electromagnetic Field Solver Suite of Tools

The IBM Electromagnetic Field Solver Suite of Tools includes full-wave two-dimensional and three-dimensional and quasi-static two-dimensional and three-dimensional tools. These tools are distributed free to universities, but there is a charge for anyone else. The suite includes:

• LCGEN - a quasi-static, three-dimensional solver for inductance and capacitance employing a PEEC formulation.
• EMSIM - a 3D, full-wave, frequency-domain, method-of-moment, electromagnetic solver. It calculates electric and magnetic fields, current distribution, or input impedance.
• PROPCALC - a 3D, full-wave frequency-domain method-of-moment, eigenvalue based electromagnetic solver that can provide R(f)L(f)C(f)G(f) parameters per unit length for periodic features; includes advanced iterative solution; best used for mesh planes, homogeneous and inhomogeneous waveguides.
• EMSURF - a three-dimensional full-wave, frequency-domain, method-of-moment, electromagnetic solver. It uses a surface impedance-based solution technique and has a built-in Debye algorithm for modeling dielectric loss. A built-in FFT algorithm is included for calculating time-domain waveforms.
• CSURF - a hierarchical capacitance solver for large numbers of unknowns and multiple dielectrics. It operates 10 to 175 times faster than LCGEN and commercial tools.
• AQUAIA - an on-chip analysis tool that performs frequency-dependent transmission line analysis. The tool extracts the per-unit length parameters of any layer in a large on-chip wiring stack based on actual processing layers and dimensions using the built-in 2D and 3D EIP full-wave electromagnetic field solvers, CZ2D, EMITPKG, and CSURF. The results are then directly fed into the built-in circuit simulator to get performance parameters such as delay, rise time, crosstalk, common-mode noise, and eye diagrams.

LC

LC is simulation tool for the analysis of the electromagnetic properties of electrical interconnects that runs on CRAY, SGI or LINUX/x86 workstations. The full three-dimensional circuit is modeled, so all interactions are automatically included in the solution. The model can be excited by numerous types of waveforms, and the transient response measured using common values such as voltage and current. Circuit parameters such as inductance, capacitance, and impedance can be derived from the transient response, and frequency-domain results such as S-parameters can also be calculated. Far field radiation patterns can be obtained.

LC is primarily an electromagnetic simulation and uses the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) technique. FDTD is a full wave explicit solution of Maxwell's equations in three dimensions. In FDTD, the rectangular volume enclosing the model is discretized into a large number of small cells, which may be uniformly-sized, or may vary in size within the simulation space. The dielectric, permeable, lossy, and conducting material properties of each cell are incorporated into the field updates, which are performed iteratively in small time steps.

An interface between the electromagnetic simulation and the circuit simulation program SPICE is available within LC. This allows the user to add arbitrary SPICE circuits, such as drivers and loads, into the interconnect model. The interconnect performance is calculated using the electromagnetic simulation, while the lumped-element circuits are evaluated by SPICE. Both simulations are performed in the time domain, and proceed in lock step.

LTU-UAq PEEC Code

Luleå University of Technology, Sweden (LTU) and University of L'Aquila, Italy (UAq) support the development of a 3D full-wave Partial Element Equivalent Circuit (PEEC) code. The provide a PEEC-kernel under the GNU licence.

MagNet (Infolytica)

MagNet Trial Edition is a fully functional 2D magnetostatic field solver that contains all of the same features as a full edition of MagNet's magnetostatic 2D package.

MEEP

MEEP is a free finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation software package developed at MIT to model electromagnetic systems. Meep supports 1d/2d/3d/cylindrical problems, distributed-memory parallelism, dispersive and nonlinear media, PML boundaries, and is completely scriptable via both C++ and Scheme (GNU Guile) interfaces.

Multiple Multipole (MMP) Algorithms

The Multiple Multipole (MMP) algorithms were developed by Christian Hafner at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). The algorithms have evolved and been incorporated into the commercial code, Max-1, but the original 2D and 3D source codes are still available for free at the above link.

NEC2

NEC2 - the Numerical Electromagnetics Modeling code is a widely used 3D code based on the method of moments. It was developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory more than 10 years ago and has been compiled and run on many different computer systems. NEC2 is particularly effective for analyzing wire-grid models, but also has some surface patch modeling capability. Codes are also available at Ray Anderson's Unofficial Archives at Ray Anderson's Unofficial Archives.

NEC2 uses a text interface. There a several free or inexpensive graphical interfaces that do pre- and post-processing of NEC2 models. A good free code is 4nec2, which can be found at http://home.ict.nl/~arivoors/.

pdnMesh

pdnMesh is a program that can solve 2D potential problems (Poisson Equation) and eigenvalue problems (Helmholtz Equation) using the Finite Element Method. Common applications occur in electromagnetics, heat flow and fluid dynamics. It can solve problems using both Nodal Based Formulation and Edge Based (Vector) Formulation.

Puma-EM

Provides surface Method of Moments for electromagnetics, enhanced by using the Multilevel Fast Multipole Method. Code is parallelized and runs on desktops and clusters.

Radia

Software for 3D magnetostatics, which uses a finite volume integral approach for accurate computation of integrated field components. It works with Mathematica and is available for Free Download.

RillFEM

RillFEM3.0 is multi-physical 2D Finite Element Method software working under OS Win9x, W2k. This web site has not been updated recently and the contact information is no longer valid.

Students' QuickField

Students' QuickField(TM), formerly known as ELCUT, is a 2D finite element simulation package solving plane and axisymmetric problems of electrostatics, nonlinear DC magnetics, AC magnetics, current flow, nonlinear heat transfer, stress analysis and coupled problems on any PC.

ScatLab

Software developed to perform electromagnetic scattering simulations mainly based on classical Mie theory solution. ScatLab features: scattered intensity polar diagrams for coated and uncoated spherical particles; scattered intensity versus theta graphs for coated and uncoated spherical particles; scattered intensity versus radius graphs for homogeneous spherical particles; extinction, scattering and back scattering cross section graphs; angle depolarization graphs; near field imaging for homogeneous spherical particles; Lorentz and Drude dielectric function implementation for refractive index calculation; support for T-matrix method computations.

Sonnet Lite

A feature-limited version of Sonnet Software's planar-MOM electromagnetic simulation software.

ToyPlane (2D), Toy (3D) and Pulse (full-functional 3D); TLM and FDTD codes

The ToyPlane and ToyAirport codes are 2D test and example codes for time-domain local-operator methods. The Toy and ToyBox codes are 3D test and example codes for time-domain local-operator methods. The Pulse codes are fully functional general 3D codes based on time-domain local-operator methods.

Trace Analyzer

A nice 2-D solver for determining the transmission line parameters of printed circuit board trace geometries. It's capable of analyzing trace cross-sections consisting of many traces, planes and lossy dielectric materials. Can export RLGC parameters to HSPICE or ADS.

Yatpac

Yatpac (Yet Another TLM Package) is a free TLM-based full-wave electromagnetic simulation package developed at the Institute for High-Frequency Engineering of the Technische Universität München in Germany. The Yatpac web site was last updated in March 2006.

If you are familiar with other free EM modeling software that that should be added to the list above, send the name of the software, a hypertext link, and a brief description to CVEL-L@clemson.edu