Evolved antenna

Then, in a step similar to natural selection, a portion of the candidate antennas with the worst scores are discarded, leaving a smaller population of the highest-scoring designs.

The first evolved antenna designs appeared in the mid-1990s from the work of Michielssen, Altshuler, Linden, Haupt, and Rahmat-Samii.

Most practitioners use the genetic algorithm technique or some variant thereof to evolve antenna designs.

Their external appearance was essentially identical in that a foam radome covered the radiating elements.

Other evolved antennas were subsequently used on the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer spacecraft.

The 2006 NASA ST5 spacecraft antenna. This complicated shape was found by an evolutionary computer design program to create the best radiation pattern.