Hybrid differential evolution and enhanced particle swarm optimisation technique for design of reconfigurable phased antenna arrays

This study introduces a new design method for reconfigurable phased arrays using hybrid differential evolution (DE) and enhanced particle swarm optimisation (EPSO) technique. The proposed technique combines DE and enhanced version of standard PSO with improved mechanism that updates velocities and global best solution. In the hybrid algorithm, DE and EPSO are executed in parallel with frequent information sharing to enhance the newly generated population. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm over each separate algorithm, examples for designing reconfigurable linear and circular antenna arrays with prescribed null directions are presented. Null steering is achieved by position perturbation of array elements in arbitrary directions with minimum sidelobe level change constraint. Another objective is to minimise the number of mobilised elements by introducing elements selection criteria. Simulation results show that the global search ability of the proposed algorithm is improved when compared with DE and EPSO separately.