Multiple objective optimisation for antenna diversity on airborne platforms

Abstract

Vehicles such as automobiles, ships, satellites, and aircraft have a limited amount of physical space to install antennas for communications and navigation systems. This is exacerbated by the use of modern materials, like carbon fibre, and that large areas of the vehicles structure cannot be used to mount antenna, due to aerodynamic or other requirements. Therefore, it is necessary to be able to quickly and accurately find the optimum locations to mount a number of antenna systems, in a restricted space, whilst considering a number of different and sometimes contradictory antenna performance parameters. Thus, defining the optimum antenna locations is a multi-objective problem (MOP) and lends itself to the use of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEA). This paper presents a MOEA methodology that can be used to accurately, quickly, and robustly define the antenna locations. It will also define an appropriate MOEA and the fitness functions for predicting the radio frequency (RF) interoperability/mutual coupling between antenna systems and antenna RF radiation pattern installed performance.