ABSTRACT
Genetic algorithms (GAs) are becoming increasingly popular in electromagnetic applications. Originally developed by Holland and popularized by Goldberg, they have been successfully applied to a number of electromagnetic design problems such as array antennas, wire and patch antennas, antenna pattern synthesis, and electromagnetic filters. The field of wireless antenna design presents many challenges. Today’s cell-phone antennas must be inexpensive, small, and insensitive to polarization misalignment and multipath, with minimum radiation into the human head. GAs are sophisticated ways of guessing the best answer to an optimization problem. They are particularly well suited to problems involving a number of mutually interacting design parameters and a poorly behaved solution space. Many of the terms associated with GAs are derived from the principles of biology, evolution, or natural selection. Chromosomes are made up of genes, where a gene may be considered as a single antenna parameter, such as a wire diameter or the excitation coefficient of an element.
