Wideband-antenna design can be quite formidable especially for the handheld terminal, as compromises must be made for frequency band, size, pattern, gain, and simplicity. Recently, a planar UWB monopole antenna was proposed by the City University of Hong Kong's Xue-Song Yang, Kai Tat Ng, Sai Ho Yeung, and Kim Fung Man. This antenna was designed using a newly developed evolutionary optimization algorithm.
One recently proposed multi-objective optimization algorithm adopts a fast non-dominated sorting approach, crowding mechanism, and elitism strategy. To do so, it combines parent and offspring populations and selects the best N solutions (where N is the population size). A somewhat new genetic operator dubbed "jumping genes" has now been proven to be a much more computationally efficient algorithm when both convergence and diversity are required. In this work, the jumping genes play a significant role with the fast crowding technique when an ultimate set of non-dominated design solutions are being considered.
This antenna is a planar, multiple-trapezoidal monopole with adjustable dimensions. It is fed by a microstrip feedline. To further improve monopole performance like impedance bandwidth, it features a rectangular/rounded-corner ground impedance bandwidth. To demonstrate this approach, an antenna configuration was chosen. The engineers used the algorithm to find the optimal recommendation for hardware prototype fabrication. See "Jumping Genes Multiobjective Optimization Scheme for Planar Monopole Ultrawideband Antenna," IEEE Transactions On Antennas And Propagation, December 2008, p. 3659.