Designing Reconfigurable Antennas Through Hardware Evolution

In a proposed method of designing a recon- figurable antenna, the design would be opt- imized through evolution in hardware. The proposed method would be a specific instance of an emerging general method of automated synthesis of electronic circuits in hardware. Other specific instances of the general method were described in two NASA Tech Briefs articles: “Reconfigurable Arrays of Transistors for Evolvable Hardware” (NPO-20078), Vol. 25, No. 2 (February 2001), page 36; and “Evolutionary Automated Synthesis of Electronic Circuits” (NPO-20535), which precedes this article. To recapitulate: Under the direction of genetic and/or other evolutionary algorithms, the configurations and thus the functionalities of circuits would be made to evolve until at least one circuit exhibited a desired behavior. Evolution would include selective, repetitive connection and/or disconnection of transistors, amplifiers, inverters, and/or other circuit building blocks.