Switched fragmented aperture antennas

This paper introduces a reconfigurable aperture concept derived from fragmented aperture design where the configuration of the fragmented aperture may be switched by the user to obtain different functionalities. A fragmented aperture antenna is a patchwork of discrete conducting and dielectric units distributed over the specified aperture. The arrangement of the units is determined using an efficient, multistage procedure that incorporates the genetic algorithm for optimization and the finite-difference time-domain method for the electromagnetic computation. Typically, the criterion for optimum performance has been broadband gain at a particular angle. The resulting antennas contain isolated scattering structures that are fragmented in appearance.