Synthesis of flat-top beam pattern of linear antenna arrays with restricted side lobe level, VSWR and independent nulls using Flower Pollination algorithm

Inspired by the biological evolution and the natural selection, evolutionary algorithms have already shown their success in obtaining the solutions for many complex optimisation problems. The aim of this paper is to study the performance of Flower Pollination algorithm for the synthesis of the flat-top beam pattern in linear antenna arrays with restrictions on the peak side lobe level, ripple in the flat-top portion, and maximum Voltage Standing Wave Ratio along with the two independent nulls. Mutual coupling is considered between the parallel dipole antennas. This synthesis is obtained by the generation of current amplitudes with binary phase shifters of 0 and 180 degrees for the antenna elements. Matlab software is used for the simulations. The values of the different antenna parameters as well as the statistical parameters such as the global best fitness value, worst fitness value, mean and standard deviation from the optimisation process generated by the simulations are obtained. Two examples are presented in this paper with different number of antenna elements. The obtained results show the superiority of the Flower Pollination algorithm over Particle Swarm Optimisation algorithm. Moreover, the results obtained from simulations are validated by using FEKO software.