Nature-inspired techniques for the synthesis of aperiodic ultra-wideband phased arrays

Over the past few decades, much research has been invested in the exploration of wideband and ultrawideband (UWB) antenna arrays. The goals of such array designs are to determine the best element arrangements that yield radiation patterns possessing the highest degrees of sidelobe suppression and no grating lobes over the largest possible operating bandwidths. It has been recently shown that nature-inspired array design methodologies can provide solutions that exhibit these ultra-wideband characteristics. An overview of several new array design techniques is given here; linear polyfractal arrays, linear raised-power series (RPS) arrays, compact linear UWB design, and planar arrays of aperiodic tilings. Robust nature-inspired genetic algorithm optimization techniques and other evolutionary strategies were utilized in the design of these types of arrays in order to obtain the best possible UWB performance.