A Novel Particle Swarm Optimization Based Optimal Design of Three-Ring Concentric Circular Antenna Array

In this paper the maximum sidelobe level (SLL) reductions without and with central element feeding in various designs of three-ring concentric circular antenna arrays (CCAA) are examined using a novel particle swarm optimization algorithm (NPSO) to finally determine the global optimal CCAA design. Real coded Genetic Algorithm (RGA) is also employed for comparative optimization but it proves to be suboptimal. The present paper assumes non-uniform excitations and uniform spacing of excitation elements in each three-ring CCAA design. Among the various CCAA designs, the three-ring CCAA containing central element and 4, 6 and 8 elements in three successive concentric rings proves to be such global optimal design with global minimum SLL (-19.69dB) determined by NPSO.