Application of particle swarm optimization for the design of a broadband microstrip antenna

The discrete binary particle swarm optimization (PSO) is an extension of standard PSO on binary system. As a time-domain method, finite different time domain (FDTD) can obtain the required broadband frequency information through once time-domain calculation. Therefore, PSO's fitness function can choose multi-point in frequency, that is, the design of fitness function is more flexible when PSO is combining with FDTD. In this paper, discrete binary PSO combined with FDTD method is applied to design a broadband microstrip antenna. Test results show the bandwidth of the optimized antenna at -10dB is expanded significantly compared with the original antenna.