Design of very thin wide band absorbers using modified local best particle swarm optimization

A method of using particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to design electromagnetic absorber is presented. To demonstrate effectiveness of the PSO algorithm three different design cases are optimized. To reduce the local minimum traps, a modified local search strategy is employed. Each design problem is optimized using genetic algorithm (GA) and four variants of PSO algorithms, namely global PSO (gbest), local PSO (lbest), comprehensive learning PSO (CLPSO), and modified local PSO (MLPSO). The results clearly show that the MLPSO is a robust, fast, and useful optimization tool for designing absorbers. A seven-layer absorber achieved by this method has reflection coefficient below 18.7 dB from VHF to 20 GHz.