Comparative Study on Synthesizing Reconfigurable Time-Modulated Linear Arrays using Differential Evolution, Artificial Bee Colony and Particle Swarm Optimization

This paper presents a new technique based on optimization tools to design phase only, digitally controlled, reconfigurable antenna arrays through time modulation. In the proposed approach, the on-time durations of the time-modulated elements and the static amplitudes of the array elements are perturbed in such a way that the same on-time sequence and discrete values of static amplitudes for four bit digital attenuators produces either a pencil or a flat-top beam pattern, depending on the suitable discrete phase distributions of five bit digital phase shifters. In order to illustrate the technique, three optimization tools: differential evolution (DE), artificial bee colony (ABC), and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are employed and their performances are compared. The numerical results for a 20-element linear array are presented.