An optimal mutually coupled concentric circular antenna array synthesis using ant lion optimization

This paper presents an accurate design approach for concentric circular antenna array (CCAA) synthesis to improve the far-field radiation characteristics using a meta-heuristic optimization technique called ant lion optimization (ALO). The far-field radiation pattern is improved with lower side lobe level (SLL) which is essential for the reduction of interference in the entire side lobe regions. The ALO algorithm is a recently proposed evolutionary technique which is applied to determine the optimal sets of current excitation weights and to find the optimal inter-element spacing between the array elements in the 3-ring structure of the CCAA design. In this context, the design examples of two 3-ring CCAAs, one having the set of (4, 6, 8) elements and the other having the set of (8, 10, 12) elements, with and without the centre element, are presented by optimizing the array parameters. The results obtained by using the ALO algorithm-based approach show considerable improvement of SLL with respect to that of the uniform array pattern and those of the methods reported in the recent literature.