Fire Fly and Artificial Bees Colony Algorithm for Synthesis of Scanned and Broadside Linear Array Antenna

Abstract—This paper describes the application of two recently developed metaheuristic algorithms known as fire fly algorithm (FFA) and artificial bees colony (ABC) optimization for the design of linear array of isotropic sources. We present two examples: one for broad side arrays and the other for steerable linear arrays. Three instances are presented under each category consisting of different numbers of array elements and array pattern directions. The main objective of the work is to compute the radiation pattern with minimum side lobe level (SLL) for specified half power beam width (HPBW) and first null beam width (FNBW). HPBW and FNBW of a uniformly excited antenna array with similar size and main beam directions are chosen as the beam width constraints in each case. Algorithms are applied to determine the non-uniform excitation applied to each element. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithms for optimization of antenna problems is examined by all six sets of antenna configurations. Simulation results obtained in each case using both the algorithms are compared in a statistically significant way. Obtained results using fire fly algorithm shows better performances than that of artificial bees colony optimization technique provided that the same number of function evaluations has been considered for both the algorithms. 1.