Multibranch Machine Learning-Assisted Optimization and Its Application
to Antenna Design
Abstract
Many full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulations are needed to design an
antenna meeting certain requirements, which involves a considerable
computational burden. A multibranch machine learning-assisted
optimization (MB-MLAO) method is proposed to dramatically reduce the
computational complexity involved in this task. This method is then
applied to antenna design and worst-case performance (WCP) searching
under a practical manufacturing tolerance. In the conventional Gaussian
process regression (GPR)-based MLAO method, a lower confidence bound
(LCB) prescreening strategy with an empirical LCB constant is used to
weigh the predicted value and predicted uncertainty. Using a
variable-fidelity machine learning method, an adaptive LCB variable, and
a retraining and repredicting method, the proposed MB-MLAO method can
strike a delicate balance between exploitation and exploration in
searching. Moreover, variable-fidelity data from full-wave EM
simulations are used in the deep GPR machine learning method to further
reduce the computational burden. Finally, two test functions and four
types of antennas are selected as examples to illustrate the superiority
of the proposed MB-MLAO method.