Particle swarm optimization for reconfigurable phase‐differentiated array design

TLDR

Multiple‑beam antenna arrays are important for communications and radar, and the design challenge is to find element excitations that produce a sector pattern main beam with low side lobes while also achieving a high‑directivity, pencil‑shaped main beam when the same amplitudes are applied with zero phase. The paper proposes a reconfigurable dual‑beam antenna array design using particle swarm optimization and details two optimization approaches. The authors use PSO to optimize Woodward–Lawson synthesis coefficients and directly optimize element excitations, and they also discuss a parallel PSO implementation on a multi‑node Beowulf cluster to enhance global optimization. The two PSO approaches are compared, showing that the resulting designs are viable but sensitive to excitation errors. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., DOI 10.1002/mop.11005.

Abstract

Abstract Multiple‐beam antenna arrays have important applications in communications and radar. This paper describes a method of designing a reconfigurable dual‐beam antenna array using a new evolutionary algorithm called particle swarm optimization (PSO). The design problem is to find element excitations that will result in a sector pattern main beam with low side lobes with the additional requirement that the same excitation amplitudes applied to the array with zero phase should result in a high directivity, low side lobe, and pencil‐shaped main beam. Two approaches to the optimization are detailed. First, the PSO is used to optimize the coefficients of the Woodward–Lawson array synthesis method. Second, the element excitations will be optimized directly using PSO. The performance of the two methods is compared and the viability of the resulting designs are discussed in terms of sensitivity to errors in the excitation. Additionally, a parallel version of the particle swarm code developed for a multi‐node Beowulf cluster and the benefits that multi‐node computing bring to global optimization will be discussed. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 38: 168–175, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.11005