A quantized water cycle optimization algorithm for antenna array synthesis by using digital phase shifters

In this article, a quantized water cycle algorithm (QWCA) is used for the antenna array pattern synthesis with low side‐lobe levels (SLLs) and nulls at desired directions by using four‐bit digital phase shifters. In addition to the standard features as a metaheuristic algorithm, QWCA has an internal quantization mechanism and a precalculated array factor method. The latter provides an accelerated procedure to QWCA under favour of the digitized values that can be stored in a three‐dimensional array. This acceleration is based on the reality that the accessing data in the memory need less time than the usage of the mathematical functions throughout the optimization process. The internal quantization mechanism of QWCA is utilized to achieve digital values matching to the discrete values of the phase shifter instead of the simple rounding up/down routines after optimization. The numerical results showed that QWCA can obtain very good SLLs and null depth levels (NDLs) on the synthesized pattern. Moreover, the results are achieved in remarkably short optimization times. SLL and NDL values obtained by QWCA are also compared with the available literature values. The comparisons reveal that QWCA is able to produce better results than the other compared alternatives. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:21–29, 2015.