Simulated Annealing Assisted Sparse Array Selection Utilizing Deep Learning

This paper proposes simulated annealing (SA) assisted deep learning (DL) based sparse array selection approach. Conventional DL-based antenna selectors are primarily data-driven techniques. As a result, the required dataset is generated by listing all possible combinations of selecting $M$ sensors given $N$ uniform array, which is computationally expensive. A simulated annealing algorithm is proposed to assist dataset generation as an initializer to circumvent the above limitation. The SA algorithm sequentially samples and optimizes the subarrays that constitute the training data samples while retaining specific array characteristics. Hence, it simplifies the dataset annotation as most array configurations generated contain desired properties, thereby reducing the computation complexity of the overall data annotation processes. Therefore, the initializer reduces computation costs related to data generation considerably. Simulation examples show that using the dataset generated by the proposed method improves the DL-based array selector’s accuracy compared to the one generated by the conventional random sampler. Moreover, the realized sparse arrays show better sparse array configuration characteristics and enhanced DOA estimation performance.