Particle Swarm Optimization of Irregular-shaped Hexagon Patch Antenna for 2.4 GHz WLAN Applications

Abstract

This study proposes a patch antenna with an irregular shape on a radiating metal patch for 2.4 GHz WLAN applications. The proposed antenna is optimized using our in-house designed particle swarm optimization (PSO) method. By optimizing the coordinates of each vertex of the hexagon radiating metal patch, the PSO algorithm successfully extends the impedance bandwidth and antenna gain without increasing the size, cost, and complexity of the antenna. The optimized antenna has a unique and irregular shape. Measured impedance bandwidth of 7.71% (2.37–2.56 GHz) and peak gain of 2.84 dBi of the proposed irregular-shaped patch antenna are obtained. The simulated and measured results of reflection coefficient, gain, and far-field radiation are found to be in good agreement with each other, hence evidently confirming the validity of the proposed method. The proposed irregular shaped hexagon patch antenna demonstrates superior performance of impedance bandwidth and antenna gain compared to those of the regular-shaped hexagon patch antenna.