Efficient beam steering in a conformal array antenna with side lobe suppression using NPSO for 5G/6G communication

This paper proposes efficient beam steering employing a Conformal Array Antenna (CAA) with suppressed Side Lobe Level (SLL) and First Null Beamwidth (FNBW). The CAA is constructed to operate at 2.4 GHz with a linear arrangement of eight elements on a circular arc to form conformity. The directional radiation with low SLL is achieved by employing an enhanced version of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), which is Novel Particle Swarm Optimization (NPSO). A comparative analysis is conducted with evolutionary algorithms like Genetic Algorithm (GA), Differential Evolution (DE), and PSO, demonstrating superior performance. The simulation study is undertaken to steer the radiation beam to 20∘, 30∘, 50∘, 80∘, and 100∘. Further, the simulation study shows that the NPSO algorithm outperforms other evolutionary algorithms (GA, DE, and PSO) in steering, suppressing SLL, and minimizing the FNBW. Further to these advantages, the proposed conformal array antenna can be used in 5G/6G communications.