Evolutionary Algorithm Geometry Optimization of Optical Antennas

Abstract

Printed circuit antennas have been used for the detection of electromagnetic radiation at a wide range of frequencies that go from radio frequencies (RF) up to optical frequencies. The design of printed antennas at optical frequencies has been done by using design rules derived from the radio frequency domain which do not take into account the dispersion of material parameters at optical frequencies. This can make traditional RF antenna design not suitable for optical antenna design. This work presents the results of using a genetic algorithm (GA) for obtaining an optimized geometry (unconventional geometries) that may be used as optical regime antennas to capture electromagnetic waves. The radiation patterns and optical properties of the GA generated geometries were compared with the conventional dipole geometry. The characterizations were conducted via finite element method (FEM) computational simulations.

Design of a compact CMOS-compatible photonic antenna by topological optimization

“…It has already been employed in several photonic device designs to improve their figures of merit: in [22] a polarization beam splitter is designed using this technique, and in [23] and [24] the same approach is applied to find an optimal multiplexer design, whereas in [25] a mode converter is optimized. Topological optimization has also been used in the optimization of metallic antennas both at RF/microwave bands (1-10 GHz) [26], and at optical frequencies (500 THz) [27], but, to the best of our knowledge, it has not been used to aid in the design of all-dielectric photonic antennas. In this work, we extend our preliminary results presented in [28], where we use topological optimization to design a high-performance SOIcompatible dielectric antenna with a footprint of 1.78 µm × 1.78 µm and an operating wavelength range exceeding 100 nm.…”

Meta-optimization of bio-inspired algorithms for antenna array design

“…Differential Evolution has been used to design antenna arrays [4,14], and several variations have been presented such as Ensemble Differential Evolution [35], and a multiobjective version in [23]. Not only in the radio frequency domain bio-inspired methods have been found useful: In [7], a Genetic Algorithm (GA) was applied to improve the geometry of optical antennas, since traditional RF design rules are not suitable for higher frequencies. The GA produced nonconventional geometries that outperform the classical dipole designs.…”