Design of Reconfigurable Array Antennas With Minimum Variation of Active Impedances

[Abstract] In this letter, the authors propose an optimization method based on the genetic algorithm (GA) to reconfigure a linear array of vertical half-wavelength dipole antennas to generate two patterns with minimum active impedance variation when the antenna switches from one pattern to other in the presence or absence of a ground plane behind the array. The problem is to find a fixed voltage amplitude distribution that generates two broadside symmetrical beams in the horizontal plane: a pencil beam with zero phases and a flat-top beam with phases in the range from -180deg to +180deg. Mutual coupling effect is taken into account via open circuit mutual impedance matrix