Abstract
Optimally designed arrays are used to obtain high gain and directivity. Based on the desired application, different radiation patterns can he generated. These patterns have generally a main beam and some sidelobes. These last ones are undesirable because they can cause electromagnetic interference and compatibility issues. Therefore, sidelobe levels (SLLs) reduction is one of the most important factors for the design of antenna arrays and arrays must be designed in a way to reduce SLLs. In this paper, the optimal design of circular antenna arrays (CAA) for maximum SLLs reduction is investigated using a newly developed metaheuristic that is the most valuable player algorithm. This algorithm is inspired from sport and it has been proven to be an excellent optimization algorithm for mathematical benchmarks. Three cases with different number of arrays are investigated. For comparison purposes, ten other well-known optimization algorithms are used. The design results obtained show the superiority of the proposed algorithm for the optimal design of CAA and for sidelobe reduction over many other algorithms.