Exploiting asymmetry in a capacitively loaded strongly coupled dipole array

The scope of this work is to investigate asymmetry in a strongly coupled dipole array and exploit its effect for bandwidth and scanning improvement. Typically, antenna array elements are symmetrical in E- and H-plane. Introducing non-symmetric elements offers additional freedom to improve the array characteristics. The effect of non-symmetric elements is studied and a reference case is created with a symmetric element in unit cell design. The obtained bandwidth for the reference case is a 6:1 at the broadside. Using this element as a base for this work, we pixelate parts of the element and optimize this parts with a genetic algorithm. Having an initial design (solution) reduces significant the number of iterations needed for the genetic algorithm to converge. The element was studied in a rectangular and in triangular lattice. The results indicate that in both cases the performance is improved. Finally, the performance of the developed array element was investigated in terms of the array figure of merit, a general measure of array element performance. This resulted in the best known array figure of merit; 0.84.