Synthesis of unequally spaced array using multi-stage differential evolution algorithm

Design of an unequally spaced linear array with pencil beam and low peak sidelobe level (PSLL) is very important to offer promising system capacity for wireless communication systems. However, most researchers have only focused on either the main beam width or the PSLL. In this paper, a multi-stage differential evolution algorithm (MSDEA) is proposed to jointly optimize the null-to-null beam width (NNBW) of the main beam, the PSLL and the power efficiency by designing a new objective function. Numerical results indicate that the proposed MSDEA algorithm outperforms the conventional DEA in terms of NNBW and power efficiency.