A PSO application for locating defective elements in antenna arrays

In this paper an approach using the Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO) is proposed which allows to locate the defective elements in an antenna array. A cost function has been proposed using the array factor of the defected array that can lead to the location of the defective antenna elements in the array. Complete fault as well as partial fault elements are considered in the formulation. Although in this paper the formulation has been developed for linear array, it can easily be extended to case of a planar array.