Particle swarm optimization (PSO) for reflector antenna shaping

It has been shown that reflector antenna systems can benefit substantially from careful shaping of the main or sub-reflectors, or both, in order to maximize the antenna's performance (Duan, D.-W. and Rahmat-Samii, Y., 1995). Shaped reflectors can be used to achieve high efficiencies and gains, low side-lobe levels, and arbitrarily contoured beams. As the demands placed on satellite broadcasting and communications channels and the use of space-borne radar applications increase, so too do the requirements for the antennas on which these systems rely. The paper establishes particle swarm optimization as a candidate for solving difficult reflector synthesis problems. This is done by developing the tools required to perform the reflector synthesis and solving an example to serve as proof-of-concept. The example is to shape the main reflector of a reflector antenna with F/D=1.0, such that the scanning performance of the antenna. is improved.