Use of an Evolutionary Tool for Antenna Array Synthesis.

This paper describes an evolutionary approach to the optimization of element antenna arrays. Classic manual or automatic optimization methods do not always yield satisfactory results, being either too labour-intensive or unsuitable for some specific class of problems. The advantage of using an evolutionary approach is twofold: on the one hand it does not introduce any arbitrary assumptions about what kind of solution shows the best promise; on the other hand, being intrinsically non-deterministic, it allows the whole process to be repeated in search of better solutions. A generic evolutionary tool originally developed for a totally different application area, namely test program generation for microprocessors, is employed for the optimization process. The results show both the versatility of the tool (it's able to autonomously choose the number of array elements) and the validity of the evolutionary approach for this specific problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]