Thinning of large antenna arrays in order to obtain low sidelobes is a difficult and nontrivial problem. Evolutionary programming (EP), a multi-agent stochastic search method, is proposed for optimizing thinned phased arrays with a large number of elements. Experiments are conducted to determine the efficiency of EP in terms of the reliability in producing acceptable solutions and the quality of the final solution. Antennal arrays with up to 200 elements are thinned to obtain maximum sidelobe levels of less than -20 dB. Simulation results indicate that when the number of elements in the array is greater than 120, EP is always successful in finding solutions that have maximum sidelobe levels of -20 dB or lower.
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