YAHYA RAHMAT-SAMII
Distinguished Professor,
Northrop-Grumman Chair in electromagnetics,
past chairman of the Electrical Engineering Department,
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Nature Inspired Optimization Techniques in Engineering:
Let Darwin and the bees help improve your designs
ABSTRACT: Engineers are constantly challenged with the temptation to search for optimum solutions for complex engineering system designs. The ever increasing advances in computational power have fueled this temptation. The well-known brute force design methodologies are systematically being replaced by the state-of-the-art Evolutionary Optimization (EO) techniques. In recent years, EO techniques are finding growing applications to the design of all kind of systems with increasing complexity. Among various EO’s, nature inspired techniques such as Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) have attracted considerable attention. GA utilizes an optimization methodology which allows a global search of the cost surface via the mechanism of the statistical random processes dictated by the Darwinian evolutionary concept (adaptation, selection, survivability and mutation). PSO is a robust stochastic evolutionary computation technique based on the movement and intelligence of swarms of bees looking for the most fertile feeding location applying their cognitive and social knowledge. This presentation will focus on: (a) an engineering introduction to GA and PSO by describing in a unique fashion the underlying concepts and recent advances for those who have used these techniques and for those who have not had any experiences in these areas, (b) demonstration of the potential applications of GAs and PSO’s to a variety of engineering designs including antennas for remote sensing and satellite communication applications, arrays for radio astronomy imaging, multi-band, wideband and UWB antenna designs in personal communications, design of electromagnetic and photonic bandgap (EBG & PBG) structures, etc, and (c) assessment of the advantages and the limitations of these techniques.
BIO: Before joining UCLA in 1989, he was a Senior Research Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Dr. Rahmat-Samii was the 1995 President of IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society and was appointed an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer presenting lectures internationally. Dr. Rahmat-Samii was elected as a Fellow of IEEE in 1985 and a Fellow of IAE in 1986 and also served as the Vice President of AMTA. Dr. Rahmat-Samii has authored and co-authored over 720 technical journal articles and conference papers and has written 25 book chapters and three books entitled, Electromagnetic Optimization by Genetic Algorithms, and Impedance Boundary Conditions in Electromagnetics and Implanted Antennas in Medical Wireless Communications. He is also the holder of several patents. His research contributions cover a diverse area of electromagnetics and antennas. Dr. Rahmat-Samii has received numerous awards, including the 1992 and 1995 Wheeler Best Application Prize Paper Award for his papers published in the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Transactions, 1999 University of Illinois ECE Distinguished Alumni Award, IEEE Third Millennium Medal, and AMTA’2000 Distinguished Achievement Award. In 2001, Rahmat-Samii was the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate in Physics from the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. In 2001, he was elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts. In 2002, he received the Technical Excellence Award from JPL and in 2005 he was the recipient of the URSI Booker Gold Medal. He is the recipient of the 2007 Chen-To Tai Distinguished Educator Award of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. Prof. Rahmat-Samii is the designer of the IEEE AP-S logo which is displayed on all IEEE AP-S publications.
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