Null steering of linear antenna Arrays with use of modified touring ant colony optimization algorithm

A new and flexible method is presented that is based on the ant colony optimization algorithm for the pattern synthesis of linear antenna arrays with the prescribed nulls. Nulling of the pattern is achieved by controlling only the amplitude of each array element. To show the versatility of the present method, some design specifications such as the side lobe level, null depth, and dynamic range ratio are considered by introducing a set of weighting factors in the cost function constructed for the ant colony optimization algorithm. Several illustrative examples of Chebyshev patterns with the imposed single, multiple, and broad nulls are given. (C) 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.