DESIGN AND OPTIMIZATION OF A VIVALDI ANTENNA USING GENETIC ALGORITHM FOR GSM APPLICATIONS

This paper discusses the use of Genetic Algorithm (GA) in designing a Vivaldi antenna optimized for operation at 1.8 GHz, a frequency commonly used in global system for mobile communication (GSM). The proposed antenna was built on a Flame Retardant (FR)-Grade 4 substrate with a dielectric constant (k) of 4.4 and loss tangent is 2 x 10- 3 at 1.8 GHz. The proposed antenna was optimized for enhanced return loss and gain using a multi-objective function. A hybrid HFSS- MATLAB was used to facilitate iterative GA optimization. Tournament selection, Roulette wheel selection, and Rank-Based selection methods were adopted and compared for efficiency and convergence.