Linear antenna array synthesis using cat swarm optimization

Antenna arrays with high directivity and low side lobe levels need to be designed for increasing the efficiency of communication systems. A new evolutionary technique, cat swarm optimization (CSO), is proposed for the synthesis of linear antenna arrays. The CSO is a high performance computational method capable of solving linear and non-linear optimization problems. CSO is applied to optimize the antenna element positions for suppressing side lobe levels and for achieving nulls in desired directions. The steps involved in the problem formulation of the CSO are presented. Various design examples are considered and the obtained CSO based results are validated by comparing with the results obtained using particle swarm optimization (PSO) and ant colony optimization (ACO). The flexibility and ease of implementation of the CSO algorithm is evident from this analysis, showing the algorithm's Usefulness in electromagnetic optimization problems. (C) 2014 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.