European Conference on Antennas and Propagation 2011, 11-15 April 2011, Rome AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE CHEBYSHEV LIMIT

FOR NON-UNIFORM SPACED BROADSIDE LINEAR ANTENNA ARRAYS BY MEANS OF A MULTI-OBJECTIVE GENETIC ALGORITHM. F. Napoli1, L. Pajewski1, G. Schettini1 and R. Vescovo2, 1 Roma Tre" University, Applied Electronics Department, Via della Vasca Navale 84, 00146 Rome, Italy, 2 University of Trieste, Department of Electrical, Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Via Valerio 10, 34127 Trieste, Italy.

Introduction: In the theory of broadside linear arrays of isotropic radiators with uniform separation the Dolph-Chebyshev method [1] is an analytical design method which delivers the currents distribution I and the optimum spacing d (if d>/2) which will produce the narrowest possible beam width (BW) for a given sidelobe level (SLL) or conversely the smallest SLL for a given BW. With respect to analytical methods, numerical ones are more robust and can deal with nonuniform spacing. Genetic Algorithms (GAs) [2] are a robust stochastic iterative population-based global search method inspired by the concept of natural selection and evolution. GAs are able to numerically investigate the design space of many not analytically tractable problems and quite efficiently to find optimum operable solutions. Non-uniformly spaced arrays belong to this class of problems due to their analytical intractability and, even if there exists many numerical methods to manage with them, today it lacks a general theory for their design. In this paper we are interested in comparing the numerical results obtained by the Dolph-Chebyshev method with those given by a standard Multi-Objective GA-based (MOGA) procedure in the SLL-BW domain. In particular, we want to investigate whether a MOGA procedure can find an optimal trade-off between SLL and BW outperforming the optimal Pareto front computed with the Dolph-Chebyshev method, in the following referred as the Chebyshev limit. Method: First, we identify a suitable benchmark (the Chebyshev limit) to evaluate our evolved numerical results and we explain why this is more appropriate compared with those found in [3,4]. The MOGA procedure is first validated, in the uniform spacing case, by comparing its non-dominated solutions against the optimal Pareto front computed by using the Dolph-Chebyshev method. It is found that the MOGA procedure yields an effective approximation to the optimal front regardless the number of array elements. Then, in the non-uniform spacing case, we evolve our numerical solutions representing broadside nonuniformly excited linear arrays with isotropic antenna elements and, for several cases in which the total number of elements is varied, we compare them with their Chebyshev limit. First we consider the general case of

non-symmetrical arrays and then the special case of symmetrical ones. From the design viewpoint, symmetrical excitations and symmetrical separations are more attractive with respect to generic ones as found in [3] because the symmetry makes the design of the feed network and the compensation of mutual coupling effects easier. For this reason we further study only this design case. As a special case of symmetrical excitations, we also consider the very attractive case of uniform current distribution which is easier to realize than any other nonuniform symmetrical one. The standard MOGA procedure here utilized is a MATLAB implementation of NSGA-II with controlled elitism (CE-NSGA-II) [5]. Results: We found that when the MOGA procedure can work with separations bigger than one wavelength, the evolved solutions are actually non-uniformly spaced and only in this latter case we observe an outperforming of the Chebyshev limit. We identified a region of convergence where the evolved solutions are outperforming the corresponding ones belonging to the Chebyshev limit with the same number of radiating elements. Currently, we are working to assess the amount of this promising outperforming and we are analyzing how this advantage scales with array dimensions. REFERENCES
[1] C. L. Dolph, A Current Distribution for Broadside Arrays Which Optimizes the Relationship Between Beam Width and Side-Lobe Level, Proceedings of the I.R.E. and Waves and Electrons,vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 335-348, 1946. E. Eiben, J. E. Smith, Introduction to Evolutionary Computing, Springer, Natural Computing Series, 1st Edition 2003. M. A. Panduro, C. A. Brizuela, D. Covarrubias, C. Lopez, A multi-objective approach in the linear antenna array design, International Journal of Electronics and Communications, Elsevier, vol. 59, no. 4, pp. 205-212, 2004. M. A. Panduro,D.H.Covarrubias,C.A.Brizuela,F.R.Marante, A trade-off curve computation for linear antenna arrays using an evolutionary multi-objective approach, Soft Computing, Springer-Verlag, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 125-131, 2005. K. Deb, T. Goel, Controlled Elitist Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm for Better Convergence, Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization, Springer, vol. 1993/2001, pp. 6781, 2001.

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Fig.1: Comparison of the evolved Pareto front computed over data collected in 3 consecutive runs of CE-NSGA-II with the Chebyshev limit in the case of symmetrical non-uniformly spaced and non-uniformly excited linear arrays with N=12 radiating elements. Its possible to observe the region where the evolved solutions outperform the Chebyshev limit.

Fig.2: Radiation pattern of one evolved CE-NSGA-II solution outperforming the Chebyshev limit in the case of symmetrical non-uniformly spaced and non-uniformly excited linear arrays with N=12 radiating elements.