A Bi-Stage Framework for Automatic Development of Pixel-Based Planar Antenna Structures
This work addresses the challenge of reducing reliance on engineering insight in antenna design, offering an incremental improvement for domain-specific applications.
The paper tackles the problem of automating antenna design by proposing a bi-stage framework that optimizes pixel-based topologies, demonstrated through case studies for broadband and dual-band monopole antennas with specific performance improvements.
Development of modern antennas is a cognitive process that intertwines experience-driven determination of topology and tuning of its parameters to fulfill the performance specifications. Alternatively, the task can be formulated as an optimization problem so as to reduce reliance of geometry selection on engineering insight. In this work, a bi-stage framework for automatic generation of antennas is considered. The method determines free-form topology through optimization of interconnections between components (so-called pixels) that constitute the radiator. Here, the process involves global optimization of connections between pixels followed by fine-tuning of the resulting topology using a surrogate-assisted local-search algorithm to fulfill the design re-quirements. The approach has been demonstrated based on two case studies concerning development of broadband and dual-band monopole antennas.