A study of PSO and its variants in respect of microstrip antenna feed point optimization

The particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a powerful evolutionary computing technique used to optimize various continuous and discreet value problems. PSO have gained attention in electromagnetic community due to its ability to process complex multi-objective problems and its flexibility in algorithm alteration. There has been growing research interest in hybrid methods which combines two or more type of optimization functions into a single optimization method. The hybrid PSO presented in this paper is one such method that combines PSO and genetic algorithm (GA). In this paper, a study has been undertaken on the application of PSO and its variants to the feed point optimization of microstrip-patch antenna. What is believed to be a novel approach of the hybrid PSO with binary operator (hPSO-B) is applied to the problem. Comparisons of the different PSO variant are also presented.