Circular antenna array optimization using modified social group optimization algorithm

Antenna arrays have potential applications in Radar, mobile, broadcasting, astronomy and other defense and commercial platforms. The design of antenna arrays is essential as they are capable of controlling the radiation pattern in terms of sidelobe level (SLL), beamwidth (BW), nulls and beam steering. Among several geometries of antenna arrays, the circular antenna arrays have the advantage in terms of inherent capability to control the phase implicitly. In this paper, circular antenna array synthesis is presented using novel metaheuristic techniques like the Social Group Optimization Algorithm (SGOA) and Modified SGOA (MSGOA). The main objective of the synthesis process is to synthesize radiation patterns with suppressed SLL while the BW being equal to the uniform distribution. A comparative study is performed to analyze the performance of various synthesis techniques like amplitude only, inter-element spacing only, and amplitude spacing. The MGSOA and SGOA have proved to be performing well in accomplishing the objective. Further, the CAA synthesis problem is translated into single-variable and multivariable optimization problems following which the obvious advantage associated with the inclusion of additional variable as an additional degree of freedom is demonstrated. The simulation is carried out in Matlab (R), and results are analyzed using the plotted radiation patterns.

Automated summary

This paper presents the synthesis of circular antenna arrays using novel metaheuristic techniques like the Social Group Optimization Algorithm and Modified SGOA, aiming to achieve radiation patterns with suppressed SLL and uniform beamwidth. The performance of various synthesis techniques like amplitude only, inter-element spacing only, and amplitude spacing is analyzed, with MGSOA and SGOA proving to be effective in accomplishing the objective. The inclusion of additional variables as an additional degree of freedom is shown to have advantages in the synthesis problem.