Synthesis of Thinned Multiple Concentric Circular Ring Array Antennas using Particle Swarm Optimization

In this paper, we propose an optimization method based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm for thinning a large multiple concentric circular ring array of uniformly excited isotropic antennas and generate a pencil beam in the vertical plane with minimum relative side lobe level (SLL). The half-power beam width of the pattern is attempted to make equal to that of a fully populated array of same size and shape. The synthesis is performed with a standard particle swarm optimization technique as well as with an improved version of standard PSO. Simulation results of the proposed thinned array are compared with a fully populated array to illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed method.