FULLY OPTIMIZED MULTILAYER RADAR ABSORBER DESIGN USING MULTI-OBJECTIVE ABC ALGORITHM

Main purpose of the design of multi-layer radar absorber (MRA) by means of metaheuristic optimization algorithms is to minimize both the total thickness (TT) of MRA and the maximum reflection coefficients for transverse electric (RTE) & transverse magnetic (RTM) polarizations at any oblique angle of incidence. For this purpose, sequence and thicknesses of layers of the MRA have been optimized by either single-objective approach based on combining all objectives or double-objective approach in which TT is evaluated separately from the reflection coefficients. In this study, triple-objective artificial bee colony (TO-ABC) algorithm integrated with Pareto front technique is proposed for fully optimized MRA design. Thus, both RTE, RTM and TT are simultaneously minimized by optimizing thickness, sequence and number of the layers. To demonstrate the superiority of TO-ABC, 3 types of MRAs operating at the frequency ranges of 2–18 GHz for each angle of incidence from 0⁰ to 60⁰ are optimized and compared with the literature. Furthermore, 4 different real MRAs are also optimized using real materials given in the literature. Thanks to the developed graphical user interface and TO-ABC algorithm, despite the limited number of materials, all possible solutions providing the specified parameters are easily achieved and successful MRA structures are designed.