Angora: A free finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) electromagnetic simulation package

Angora is a free, open-source software package that computes numerical solutions to electromagnetic radiation and scattering problems. It is based on the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, which is one of the most popular approaches for solving Maxwell's equations of electrodynamics. It has been developed by Ilker R. Capoglu and Di Zhang, and is currently maintained by Di Zhang. Angora has been written mostly in C++, with a few external C functions.

Main features of Angora

Flexible and user-friendly configuration via text-based configuration files.
An automatic build and install mechanism for the GNU/Linux operating system.
Full parallelizability in three dimensions, based on the Message Passing Interface (MPI) library.
Support for planar multilayered spaces.
- Total-field/scattered-field (TF/SF) plane-wave source.
- Phasor-domain near-field-to-far-field transformation (NFFFT).
Complex optical beams (focused beam, Hermite-Gaussian beam)
Convolution perfectly-matched layer (CPML) absorbing boundaries.
Support for HDF5, a portable file storage format.
Support for dispersive media with Drude/Lorentz pole pairs.
Support for external inputs of materials and shapes.
Field-value recording (2D, 1D, single point) and movie generation.
Generation of random permittivity, permeability, conductivity profiles.
Numerical optical imaging simulation.

Documentation

Documentation is available in both html and pdf formats:

HTML

PDF

If you would like to receive updates on the development and documentation of Angora, please send an email to help@angorafdtd.org. You will only be contacted for Angora-related communication, and your email address will absolutely never be shared with anyone.

Downloads

Angora is currently only available for the GNU/Linux operating system. If you would like to port Angora to another operating system, please contact us. Contributions are always welcome.

The latest version of Angora can be downloaded here:

		Requirements
GNU/Linux x86 64-bit binary	angora-0.22.5-bin.tar.gz	GNU C shared libraries (>2.4) GNU standard C++ shared libraries (>3.4)
GNU/Linux x86 64-bit binary (with OpenMPI)	angora-0.22.5-bin-openmpi.tar.gz	GNU C shared libraries (>2.8) GNU standard C++ shared libraries (>3.4) OpenMPI shared libraries (>1.4)
Source code	angora-0.22.5.tar.gz	Following libraries: blitz++, libconfig, hdf5, boost

A list of latest important updates can be found in the ChangeLog.

External Scripts

Some useful scripts for reading and displaying Angora output can be found here.

License

Angora is licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL). For inquiries on other licensing options, please contact the authors.

Acknowledgments

The Angora project owes a great deal to the invaluable support and guidance provided by (in chronological order) Glenn S. Smith (Emeritus Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology), Vadim Backman (Professor, Northwestern University), and Allen Taflove (Professor, Northwestern University). The Angora project has been funded by the following sources (in chronological order): John Pippin Chair in Electromagnetics within the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Georgia Institute of Technology; National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant R01EB003682.

Support

For questions, suggestions, and comments, contact us at help@angorafdtd.org. Please send bug reports to bugs@angorafdtd.org