A NOVEL STRUCTURE AND DESIGN OPTIMIZATION OF COMPACT SPLINE-PARAMETERIZED UWB SLOT ANTENNA

In this paper, a novel structure of a compact UWB slot antenna and its design optimization procedure has been presented. In order to achieve a sufficient number of degrees of freedom necessary to obtain a considerable size reduction rate, the slot is parameterized using spline curves. All antenna dimensions are simultaneously adjusted using numerical optimization procedures. The fundamental bottleneck here is a high cost of the electromagnetic (EM) simulation model of the structure that includes (for reliability) an SMA connector. Another problem is a large number of geometry parameters (nineteen). For the sake of computational efficiency, the optimization process is therefore performed using variable-fidelity EM simulations and surrogate-assisted algorithms. The optimization process is oriented towards explicit reduction of the antenna size and leads to a compact footprint of 199 mm(2) as well as acceptable matching within the entire UWB band. The simulation results are validated using physical measurements of the fabricated antenna prototype.