Planar antenna array design with a multi-purpose Ga-based procedure

This paper deals with the synthesis of planar arrays. In the framework of iterative search procedures, a method based on a genetic algorithm (GA) is presented. Starting from the definition of a suitably defined cost function, thinning and weighting a randomly generated array configuration, the multi-purpose stochastic procedure is able to satisfy various antenna constraints to determines an optimal trade-off among contrasting requirements. In order to confirm the reliability of the proposed approach (also in comparison with the related literature), some highly optimized antenna array designs are reported and discussed. (C) 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.