Adaptive nulling in thinned planar arrays through Genetic Algorithms

The nulling of interferences or jammers impinging on a planar antenna array is addressed by means of an efficient adaptive control strategy based on a Genetic Algorithm. Each element of the array is uniformly weighted and the nulling feature is yielded by controlling a set of radiofrequency switches that connect or disconnect the elements from the beam forming network. Under the assumption that the direction of arrival of the desired signal is known, the on/off setup of the array elements is optimized to maximize the ratio between the power of the desired signal and the total power collected by the antenna array. Representative results concerned with different interfering scenarios with multiple undesired signals are reported to assess the effectiveness of the approach.