Forum for Electromagnetic Research Methods and Application Technologies (FERMAT)

DESIGN OF A MINIATURIZED DUAL-BAND

ANTENNA USING PARTICLE SWARM
OPTIMIZATION

Waroth Kuhirun ,Winyou Silabut and Pravit Boonek

November , 2016
Electrical Engineering Department Faculty of Engineering Kasetsart
University Bangkok Thailand
© 2016, Kuhirun et al, KU Restricted to Educational USE ONLY.

Copyright
© The use of this work is restricted solely for academic purposes. The author of this
work owns the copyright and no reproduction in any form is permitted without written
permission by the author.

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Abstract
There are various optimization techniques; one of which is particle swarm optimization.
Particle swarm optimization is an evolutionary computation technique based on the
movement and intelligence of swarms. This paper presents a design of a miniaturized
dual-band patch antenna using particle swarm optimization with moment of methods.

Keywords—Particle Swarm Optimization; Dual-Band Antenna; Patch Antenna;

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Biography
Waroth Kuhirun is Associate Professor at the Electrical Engineering
Department at Kasetsart University, Thailand. His research work is
focused on computational electromagnetics and antenna engineering.
He is also working on algorithmic trading using digital signal
processing.

Winyou Silabut is a D.Eng. student at Kasetsart University, Thailand.

His research work is mainly on designing miniaturized antennas using
particle swarm optimization.

Pravit Boonek is a D.Eng. student at Kasetsart University, Thailand.

His research work is mainly on designing mainbeam steerable antenna
elements.

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Outline

 Introduction
 Coding of a Patch Antenna
 Optimization setup and Fitness Function
 Optimization
 Conclusions
 Acknowledgement
 References

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Introduction
An antenna is an important part in Wireless Network Systems. Therefore, designing a
suitable antenna is of importance. By the fact that designing an antenna empirically is
expensive, it can be superseded by designing an antenna using a computer. In this
approach, the design of a miniaturized antenna can be optimized using an optimization
technique, for example, particle swarm optimization.
Introduced in [1], particle swarm optimization is an evolutionary computation technique
based on the movement and intelligence of swarms. There are various variations of
particle swarm optimization. Further discussion can be found in [2]-[6]. The
optimization is initialized with a random swarm of particles (a population of potential
0 0 0
solutions) P1 , P2 ,..., Pn .
Each particle flies through the search space with velocity adjusted by 3 factors:
1) Inertia factor: This factor prevents each individual particle from drastically changing
in direction.
2) Cognitive factor: The effect of this factor is that each individual particle is drawn
back to its local best position (Pbest)
3) Social factor: The effect of this factor is that each individual particle (potential
solution) is drawn toward the global best position (Gbest) found by the whole
population of particles.
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The local best position (Pbest) and the global best position (Gbest) refer to the best
position fittest to the so-called fitness function found by each individual and by the
whole swarm of particles, respectively. The fitness function corresponding radiation
characteristics can be evaluated by solving for current on the patch antenna. Radiation
characteristics can then be calculated directly from the current. So can the fitness
function. The velocity of particle i at generation t, denoted by Vi t,can be expressed as

Vi t = ωVi t −1 + c1α1 ( Pi ,tbest

−1
− Pi t −1 ) + c2α 2 (Gbest
t −1
− Pi t −1 ) (1)
Referring to Eq. 1, the velocity consists of three components: the inertia component
ωVi t −,1 the cognitive component c1α1 ( Pi ,best − Pi ) and the social component c2α 2 (Gbest
t −1 t −1 t −1
− Pi t −1 )
.These components are associated with the inertia factor, the cognitive factor and the
social factor, respectively. It should be noted that ω , α1 and α 2 are random numbers
whereas c1 and c2 are learning factors. Usually, c= 1 c=
2 2 . The position of particle i
t
at generation t , denoted by Pi , can be expressed in terms of the position and velocity
of particle i at the previous generation as shown in Eq. 2

=
Pi t Pi t −1 + Vi t (2)
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Particle swarm optimization searches for the design of antenna best-suited to the
specified characteristic(s), for example, low return loss. The specified characteristic(s)
can be calculated once the current distribution on the antenna structure is obtained. The
current distribution on antenna structure can be calculated using method of moments
(MOM)[7]. Using particle swarm optimization with method of moments, this paper
presents designing of a miniaturized patch antennas applicable for IEEE 802.11a/b/g
standard.

TABLE 1: Table to compare the return loss at 2.4 and 5 GHz of the initial antenna
shown in Fig. 2 and the antenna optimized by particle swarm optimization.

No. Parameter Initial Antenna Optimized Antenna

1 Frequency 2.4 GHz 5 GHz 2.4 GHz 5 GHz
2 Return Loss -0.9936dB -3.238 dB -16.65dB -16.79dB

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Coding of a Patch Antenna

Fig. 1 shows the structure of a patch antenna. The size of the antenna is 33 cm. The
patch is discretized into nxn cells of equal dimension where n = 15; each patch cell is
represented by a binary number 1 or 0. 1 represents the presence of associated patch cell
whereas 0 represents the absence of associated patch cell. Hence, the patch is
represented by N= 1 n=2
225 bits. The height can be 3
,
6
, ..., 3 cm; each of
16 16
which is represented by N 2 = 4 bits varying from 0...0
 to 1...1 , respectively.
N 2 bits N 2 bits

Finally, feed position is place on one of individual patch cells. The feed position is
represented by N 3 bits where N 3 can be determined by rounding up 2log 2 n . Therefore,
each of patch antenna (or particle) can be represented by N bits where N = N1 + N 2 + N 3

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Figure 1: The structure of a patch antenna

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Optimization Setup and Fitness Function

The optimization is initialized with a population of patch antennas (or particles); The
population of patch antennas (or particles) consists of 30 patch antennas; each of which
is coded by a random binary number. Fig. 2 shows an example of initial patch antennas
which is coded with a binary number with all bits are 1. The specification for designing
a patch antenna must correspond to the associated fitness function.
The fitness function is evaluated to measure the fitness to the specification of each
individual antenna (or each individual particle). For designing a dual band antenna
operating at 2.4 and 5 GHz, in this paper, the fitness function f is as follows:

Dweight
=
f + 0.001(Var2.4GHz + Var5GHz ) (3)
S11,2.4GHz + S11,5GHz
where

Dweight = { 0,max( S11,2.4 GHz , S11,5 GHz ) 〈−15 dB

1000, otherwise

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Figure 2: An initial patch antennas coded with a binary number all bits of which are 1

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Also, it should be noted that Var2.4GHz and Var5GHz in 3 refer to the variance of the
radiation pattern measured at the frequency of 2.4GHz and 5GHz, respectively. The
variance Var is approximated by

( x − x )2
Var =
θ
∑ φ
∈Nθ
∑ ∈Nφ N
(4)

where

Nθ = {00 ,100 , 200 ,..., 900 }

Nφ = {00 ,100 ,..., 3500 }

and N = 360

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Optimization
Fig. 3 shows the miniaturized patch antenna optimized using particle swarm
optimization. Fig. 4 shows the plot of S11 vs frequency. Additionally, for the optimized
antenna, Table 1 shows that the return loss at 2.4 GHz and the return loss at 5 GHz
equal -16.65 dB and -16.79 dB, respectively. That is, for the optimized antenna,
S11,2.4GHz = -16.65 dB and S11,5GHz = -16.79 dB. In addition, Figs. 5 and 6 show radiation
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pattern of the optimized antenna for = 30 and 900 , respectively at the operating
frequency of 2.4 GHz where as Figs. 7 and 8 show radiation pattern of the optimized
antenna for = 300 and 900 , respectively at the operating frequency of 5 GHz.

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Figure 3: A miniaturized patch antenna optimized using Particle Swarm Optimization

with Method of Moments

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Figure 4: Plot of return loss ( S11) vs frequency

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(a) (b)
Figure 5: Radiation pattern of the antenna at = 300 (a) 2.4 GHz (b) 5 GHz

(a) (b)
0
Figure 6: Radiation pattern of the antenna at = 90 (a) 2.4 GHz (b) 5 GHz 16
© 2016, Kuhirun et al, KU Restricted to Educational USE ONLY.

Conclusions
In this paper, a patch antenna is designed using particle swarm optimization with
method of moments to support IEEE 802.11a/b/g standard. That is, the designed patch
antenna can operate at 2.4 and 5 GHz.

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Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank Kasetsart University Research and Development
Institute and Petroleum and Petrochemical College, Chulalongkorn University for
financial support.

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References
[1] J. Kennedy and R. Eberhart,Particle Swarm Optimization, Proc. IEEE Conf. Neural,
Vol. 4, pp. 1942-1948, 1995.
[2] J. Robinson, Y. Rahmat-Samii,Particle Swarm Optimization in Electromagnetics,
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 397-407,2004.
[3] A. Marandi, F. Afshinmanesh, M. Shahabadi, and F. Bahrami, Boolean Particle
Swarm Optimization and Its Application to the Design of a Dual-Band Dual-
Polarized Planar Antenna, IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, pp. 3212-
3218,2006.
[4] R. Duvigneau, A Multi-Level Particle Swarm Optimization Strategy for
Aerodynamic Shape Optimization,EUROGEN,2007.
[5] A. P. Engelbrecht,Fundamentals of Computational Swarm Intelligence, 1st edition,
Wiley, England, pp. 85-109,2005.
[6] http://www.swarmintelligence.org/tutorials.php.
[7] S. N. Makarov,Antenna and EM Modeling with Matlab,2nd ed, New York: J.Wiley
and Sons, 2002.

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