Antenna Array Design Using Generalized

Fitness Functions
Robert F. Kubichek, Srinivasa Yasasvy Sateesh Bhamidipati, and Suresh Muknahallipatna
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
University of Wyoming
Laramie, WY, USA
Abstract Small antenna arrays can provide dynamic signal
gain and interference rejection enabling wireless networks to
communicate in difficult radio environments. Optimal array
design has focused on simplified objective functions to
facilitate solution. We extend previous research by using
fitness functions more directly related to network
performance. Particle swarm optimization is used to design
new array geometries, and performance is evaluated using
randomized array designs and fitness distributions.
Robustness to interference from multiple directions is
evaluated while accounting for array angle dependence.
Index Terms Antenna Array; beam forming; particle
swarm optimization.

I. INTRODUCTION
Our application involves mobile ad hoc networks
composed of small network nodes placed at random
locations in an urban environment. Each node consists of a
low-power transceiver mounted on a small mobile
platform that can make limited changes in location. This
enables nodes to move away from locations affected by
shadowing or multipath fading. A small antenna array
provides improved gain and some ability to reject
interference. The focus of this paper is on finding and
evaluating array geometries that optimize network
performance.
Previous research has employed a variety of different
performance measures for array design. For example, [1]
uses minimum output noise power, which measures the
arrays ability to reject interference and is easy and
efficient to compute. However it does not evaluate ability
to provide gain in one or more desired signal directions.
Thus, a more appropriate design objective is to maximize
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), which incorporates both
objectives and directly relates to communication
performance.
In our application, the locations of other nodes and
interference sources are assumed to be known [2], which
facilitates computation of SNR. In some cases a desired
gain pattern may be specified based on overall network
goals. Minimizing the mean-squared error (MSE) is the
appropriate design goal in these situations.
For this application, small platform size restricts arrays
to N=4 antennas. Another constraint is that minimum

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element separation is wavelength, i.e., dmin /4, in

order to avoid coupling between antennas. Low antenna
height (~1m) relative to expected building height suggests
that an urban canyon propagation path loss model is
appropriate, and thus azimuthal gain pattern is most
relevant. Therefore we study planar arrays and ignore 3D
effects due to elevation angle.
Smart antenna techniques, which adaptively compute
antenna weights, are not considered in this application due
to their cost and complexity. Such approaches require
separate transceivers in each antenna chain. Instead, beam
patterns are realized by computing weights to minimize a
fitness function, and the weights are applied to digitally
controlled bidirectional amplifiers and phase shifters at
each antenna.
Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is utilized to find
array geometries that minimize a fitness function based on
MSE or noise-to-signal ratio (NSR = 1/SNR). Details are
covered in [3] and summarized here. In this paper MonteCarlo techniques are used to compute histograms of MSE
and NSR, which provide a means of assessing overall
array performance. Monte-Carlo simulations are also used
to evaluate each arrays ability to reject interference from
multiple directions. Performance of PSO-designed arrays
is compared with those of several arrays currently in wide
use. We find that T and diamond-shaped arrays
outperform more traditional Y or square geometries.
II. PREVIOUS RESEARCH
Early research on array design focused on adjusting
inter-element spacing of linear arrays [4] [5] [6] [7]. That
research showed that non-uniform antenna spacing often
provides lower side lobes and better null steering than
uniform arrays. In [8] a genetic algorithm (GA) was used
to adjust linear array positions for more precise null
steering.
More general planar array geometry design has only
been addressed in a few recent papers. In [9] GA and
simulated annealing (SA) techniques are used to design a
simple 3-element array. They used the MUSIC algorithm
Cramer-Rao bound as the fitness function. The design goal
was to find an array with improved spectral estimation
performance; however, it was not evaluated for
communications applications.

Desired
G SD(|)

Fig. 1. Desired array pattern with beam-width bw

[10] uses a transformation approach to design spatial

arrays. A Legendre transform is applied to a desired beam
pattern. Constraints on element spacing (/4 < d < ) are
used with pre-specified geometry templates to design
arrays that approximate desired beam patterns. Linear,
concentric circle, and rectangular grid geometries were
studied. Although not optimal in any sense, solutions are
found in a single pass without the need for a search
algorithm.
The most general approach [1] allows array elements
to be positioned anywhere on the plane. Using PSO,
antenna positions are chosen to minimize output noise
power. We use a similar PSO- based approach in [3] but
use MSE and NSR fitness functions, which has not been
previously studied for array design.
This paper is arranged as follows: Section III defines
the two fitness functions that were studied. Section IV
describes how complex and phase-only weights are
computed to minimize their respective fitness functions.
Section V describes how PSO is used to find optimized
antenna positions using NSR and MSE. Section VI
compares array performance of several arrays using Monte
Carlo methods, and Section VII gives conclusions.
III. FITNESS FUNCTIONS
Assuming a single signal source at direction and
noise uniformly distributed across 0
, MSE is
approximated by sampling the gain pattern at N
directions as follows:
( )

| )

| )
| )

| )
(

(2)

| ))

Ideally, array performance would be the same for all

look directions. Practically, however, beam shape depends
on the angular orientation of the signal and interference
relative to the array geometry. For example, a uniform
linear array (ULA) performs best for signals arriving
broadside to the array. To account for angle dependency,
we average performance as look angle is swept through
a complete circle.

Since the PSO algorithm minimizes a fitness function, we

use the inverse of SNR defined as NSR()=1/SNR() as a
fitness function.

Actual
S(|)

( )

| )) ,

(1)

where S(|) and SD(|) are the actual and desired array
gains, and
. Initially, we use the simplified gain
function shown in Fig. 1 with G=1.
SNR is approximated by treating total received power
in the specified look direction as signal power, and the
total received power along specified null directions as
noise power:

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( )]

), and

(3)

IV. ANTENNA WEIGHTS

Optimal array geometry also depends on how antenna
weights are computed. During the PSO search procedure,
a new set of optimized antenna weights is computed for
each and candidate array geometry; this is then used to
compute the particles fitness value. We investigated
several approaches for computing the weights: Minimum
MSE using pseudo-inverse, minimum variance
distortionless response (MVDR) and phase-only MVDR,
and constrained phase-only weights using Nedler-Mead
search. The phase-only results are useful for systems using
phase shifters with constant gain. Systems with
unconstrained amplitude weights are more expensive,
requiring bidirectional amplifiers in each antenna chain.
A. Minimum variance distortionless response
MVDR is a well-known beam forming technique [11].
The received signal vector is given by
( )
,
where
represents the desired narrowband signal, and
( ) is the steering vector in the desired direction, .
(Bold variables are used for vectors and matrices). Vector
is the unwanted component of the received signal, which
includes narrowband directional interference terms plus
wideband omnidirectional noise with variance v2.
The weights that minimize output noise power are
given by
( ) ( ( )
( )), where
is the covariance of . A special case is when
interference signals are absent so that Ru = v2 I and the
weights become
( ) , where N is the
number of antennas. These are unit-magnitude phase-only
weights creating a single beam in the signal direction. If
both noise and interference are included in Ru, complex
unconstrained magnitude weights result with a main beam
in the signal direction and nulls that minimize interference
sources.

In [3] we show that these PSO-based arrays perform

better than standard square and Y arrays.
Since
performance is averaged over both favorable and

963

Y
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0.5

0
X

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0
X

0.5

-0.5

0
X

0.5

0.5

-0.5
0
X

0
-0.5

0.5

0
X

0.5

-0.5

0
-0.5

0.5

-0.5

0
X

0.5

Fig. 2. Six best-performing array geometries found

using PSO with minimum NSR fitness function and
phase only weights. All six arrays have a fitness value
of
.
0.5

0.5

-0.5
-0.5

0
X

0.5

-0.5
-0.5

0.5

0
X

0.5

0.5
Y

0
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0
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0
X

0.5

-0.5

0
X

0.5

-0.5

0
X

0.5

0.5
Y

0.5

-0.5

0
-0.5

-0.5

0
X

0.5

Fig. 3. Six best PSO Arrays for MMSE weights and as

the fitness function. All six arrays have a fitness value of
about

unfavorable directions, however, the differences are not

large. For example is 1.10 for the T array compared
to 1.14 (square array) and 1.19 (Y array). is 0.97 for
the diamond array compared to 0.99 (square array) and
1.45 (Y array). And when MVDR weights are used,
is 1.05 for the diamond array compared to 1.65 (square
array) and 1.54 (Y array).
To help understand these values, consider the worstcase array having an omnidirectional beam pattern given
by S(|)=1 for all and values. In this case NSR
( )
simplifies to
. To encourage
narrow beams, we arbitrarily set desired beam width as
(where N=4), which is approximately
one-half the best resolution of a /2 ULA. The resulting
fitness value is =7. Using G=1 in Fig. 1 gives a
similar result for . The optimized PSO arrays all have
values of approximately 1, which is about 1/7th the
noise power of the omnidirectional array (i.e., an
improvement of 8.4 dB).
A.

VI. COMPARISON OF ARRAY GEOMETRIES

0.5

-0.5

-0.5

Finally, Fig. 3 shows the six best solutions using the

fitness criterion and MMSE weights based on the
pseudo-inverse. The consistently best solution is now a
T shape. Smallest element spacing is /4, which is the
minimum allowed by the algorithm.

-0.5

V. ARRAY GEOMETRY USING PSO

Fig. 2 shows the best six array geometries found using

the fitness function and minimum NSR phase-only
weights. Axis values represent element location in
wavelengths. All six best solutions have the same diamond
shape but with different orientations, and all yield nearly
the same performance. Minimum spacing between
elements is 0.28, and lower-performing arrays are not
shown. Diamond shapes were also found using MVDR
phase-only weights, but with larger element separation.

0.5

0
-0.5

C. Phase only weights

When phase-only weights are required, weights are
found for minimum Noise-to-Signal Ratio. MSE is not
appropriate in this case since amplitudes of S(|) and
SD(|) cannot be matched using fixed magnitude weights.
The constraint |wk| = 1 results in a non-linear minimization
problem, and closed-form solutions are not possible.
Fortunately, efficient non-linear search-based solutions are
readily available. We use the Nedler-Mead simplex direct
search as implemented in Matlabs fminsearch() function,
with NSR as the fitness function [12] [13].
Particle Swarm Optimization is used to find an optimal
geometry by minimizing one of the above fitness functions
[3]. In our implementation, each particle represents a
candidate array design for N antenna locations, and
comprises a vector of N x-y pairs. These are initialized
with uniformly distributed random locations where one
coordinate pair is always fixed at the origin. This reduces
redundancy of the solutions. Furthermore, the array
element spacing is constrained by d /4, which reduces
mutual coupling problems. A second constraint is d ,
which avoids grating lobes.

0.5

Given that a desired beam pattern ( | ) is available

at M angles = [ 1, 2, , M]T, the weights can be
found to minimize MSE. The actual array response is
given by
( | )
( ),
where ( ) [ ( ) ( )
( )], a( i) is the Nx1
steering vector for the current array geometry in direction
i, and is the weight vector derived for look direction .
( | )
( | ). Ideal
The error is given by
( | )
weights would satisfy
( ), and the
( | ) ( ) , where ( ) is
MMSE solution is
the pseudo inverse of ( ).

B. Minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) weights

Fitness Function Distributions

Arrays can also be designed using Monte Carlo
techniques where antenna positions are varied randomly,
and a final design is chosen as the one with the lowest

 or . The resulting histograms of and

are useful for assessing array performance. As an example,
arrays with uniformly distributed random antenna
locations were created subject to the spacing constraint /4
< d < 3. Fig. 4 shows the histogram of fitness
values for the 4-element arrays based on 1000 random
antenna array configurations. value range from less
than 1.3 up to about 3.1. Even the worst random array with

is 7/3.1= 2.26 times better (i.e., 3.5 dB) than

the omnidirectional case.
Random arrays satisfying the stricter inter-element
spacing constraint /4 d perform even better. Fig. 5
shows the histogram of values for this case. Now the
worst case is about 1.8, which is 3.89 times better
(5.9 dB) better than the omnidirectional array. Apparently
the more restricted separation range excludes many lowperforming arrays. The best result is when is
approximately 1.0, which is comparable to that of the
optimized PSO array. Finally, note that the worst case
observed in this set is only 2.55 dB less effective than the
best array, which suggests that any 4-element random
array design honoring the separation constraint is not that
much worse than the optimal array.
Randomly generated arrays can also illustrate the
relationship between fitness functions. Fig. 6 shows
plotted against for randomly generated arrays
meeting the separation restriction /4 d . Although
there is positive correlation of 0.49, the relationship is not
strong. Clearly an array that minimizes will not
necessarily be the best geometry for minimum .
B.
Output Power Performance for N=4
In the above tests, noise is assumed to be coming
equally from all directions. Now we consider interference
from multiple discrete directions. This was discussed in
[1], which finds array geometries using PSO to minimize
total output array noise power. A Y array with elements
located on a /4 radius circle was found to be significantly
better than other tested array geometries by amounts
ranging from 6 to 12 dB.
Following the approach in [1], we performed 500
Monte-Carlo trials each comprising L=6 random
interference signals having random amplitude qi with unit
variance q2 = 1.0. Interference angles i are uniformly
distributed over (0, 2). The noise vector is
( )

( )

( ),

]
[(

[(
)(

)(

In general both a() and Aq depend on array geometry.

However, results in [1] are based on the constraint
] which does not depend on array
( ) [
geometry or look angle and is not realizable. It is useful to
consider what happens when actual steering vectors are
used and output noise power is averaged across look
angle. These results are shown in the 3rd column of Table
I. The Y array still has the best interference suppression,
but clearly its performance advantage has largely
disappeared.
Reasons for this are related to the artificial steering
vector . First, since does not correspond to a physical
angle, simulated interference directions never coincide
with the signal direction. When the more realistic steering
vector ( ) is used, random interference frequently arrives
at angles close to , presenting a much more difficult
filtering situation with poorer performance. Second, the
effects of array geometry relative to are now included,
which means some look angles are much more favorable
than others; this lowers overall performance compared to
the ideal results shown in column 2.
TABLE I. AVERAGE OUTPUT NOISE POWER (dB
RELATIVE TO Y) AFTER 500 MONTE-CARLO TRIALS
Array*
Using
9.9
Square (/4)
6.3
ULA (/4)
7.2
Square (/2)
12.2
ULA (/2)
0.0
Y (/4)
T (MMSE)
8.1
Diamond
11.7
(Min NSR)
Diamond
13.7
(MVDR)
*
Element spacing shown in parentheses.

Using a()
0.24
0.42
0.23
0.58
0.0
0.22
0.26
0.17

70

(4)

60

where ( ) is the steering vector for the i-th

interference. Letting Aq = [a( 1), a(2), , a(L)] and
q = [q1, q2, ,qL]T gives:
[

The middle column of Table I shows output noise

power in dB for eight different arrays and normalized by
the output power for the Y array. These figures are
consistent with those in [1], and suggest that the Y
geometry is significantly better at interference suppression
than the others.

) ]

50

# Occurrences

which gives
. MVDR weights are
computed as above, and output noise power is computed
using P=wH Rq w.

40

30

20

) ]

10

(5)
Ambient omnidirectional noise is set to zero, i.e., v2 = 0,

1.4

1.6

1.8

2
2.2
2.4
2.6
Fitness: NSR Constrained

2.8

3.2

Fig. 4. Histogram of values based on phase-only

weights and spacing constraint /4 < d < 3.

964

Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of

Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA. E-mail:
kubichek@uwyo.edu, Phone: (307) 766-3182, fax: (307)
766-2248.
REFERENCES

40
35

# Occurrences

30
25

[1] P. J. Bevelacqua and C. A. Balanis, "Optimizing Antenna Array

Geometry for Interference Suppression," IEEE Transactions on
Antennas and Propagation, vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 637-641, 2007.

20
15

[2] J. Miles, G. Kamath, S. Muknahallipatna, M. Stefanovic and R. F.

Kubichek, "Optimal Trajectory Determination of a Single Moving
Beacon for Efficient Localization in a Mobile Ad-Hoc Network," Ad
Hoc Networks (Elsevier), vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 238-256, 2013.

10
5
0
0.9

1.1

1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
Fitness: NSR Constrained

1.6

1.7

1.8

[3] R. F. Kubichek, S. Y. Bhamidipati and S. Muknahallipatna,

"Antenna Array Geometry for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks," in
International Conference on Computing, Networking and
Communications (submitted), Honolulu, 2014.

Fig. 5. Histogram of values based on phase-only

weights and spacing constraint /4 < d < .

[4] B. Ng, M. Er and C. Kot, "Linear array geometry synthesis with

minimum sidelobe level and null control," IEE Proc. Microwave,
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corr coeff 0.49356

1.8
1.7

[5] M. M. Khodier and C. G. Christodoulou, "Linear Array Geometry

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1.6

NSR

1.5
1.4

[6] T. H. Ismail and M. M. Dawoud, "Null Steering in Phased Arrays

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1.3
1.2

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1.1
1
1.1

1.2

1.3

1.4

1.5

1.6

1.7

1.8

MSE

Fig. 6. Scatter diagram of

linear correlation of 0.49.

[8] A. Tennant, M. Dawoud and A. P. Anderson, "Array Pattern nulling

by element position perturbations using a genetic algorithm,"
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, showing

VII. CONCLUSIONS
This paper investigates techniques to find optimal
planar array geometries using Particle Swarm
Optimization. Two fitness functions, and , are
described. is useful when the exact desired beam
pattern gain is known. is useful when only the signal
and interference directions are known. These fitness
functions directly relate to network performance goals.
PSO solutions based on and fitness
functions are shown for N=4 antennas and omnidirectional
noise. The techniques easily scale to larger arrays. Monte
Carlo techniques verify that the PSO arrays are nearly
optimal, and show that even random antenna placements
usually have good performance compared to an
omnidirectional array as long as minimum and maximum
spacing constraints are honored. Good performance of
diamond and T geometries indicate that irregular arrays
offer performance advantages over more common
configurations such as square and Y geometries. Earlier
published reports suggest that Y arrays are significantly
better than other designs when directional interference is
present, but this advantage is shown to mostly disappear
when dependence on look direction is included.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This material is based upon work supported by the Air
Force Research Laboratory under Contract No.: FA481908-C-0006. The authors are with the Department of

965

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