Analysis of Uniform Circular Arrays for Adaptive Beamforming Applications Using Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm

In this article, the particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to calculate the complex excitations, amplitudes and phases, of the adaptive circular array elements. To illustrate the performance of this method for steering a signal in the desired direction and imposing nulls in the direction of interfering signals by controlling the complex excitation of each array element, two types of arrays are considered. A uniform circular array (UCA) and a planar uniform circular array (PUCA) with 16 elements of half-wave dipoles are examined. Also, the performance of an adaptive array using 3-bit amplitude and 4-bit phase shifters are studied. In our analysis, the method of moments is used to estimate the response of the dipole UCAs in a mutual coupling environment. VC 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 18: 42–52, 2008.