Simulation-based optimization of geometry parameters is an inherent and important stage of microwave design process. To ensure reliability, the optimization process is normally carried out using full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulation tools, which entails significant computational overhead. This becomes a serious bottleneck especially if global search is required (e.g., design of miniaturized structures, dimension scaling over broad ranges of operating frequencies, multi-modal problems, etc.). In pursuit of mitigating the high-cost issue, this paper proposes a novel algorithmic approach to rapid EM-driven global optimization of microwave components. Our methodology incorporates a response feature technology and inverse regression metamodels to enable fast identification of the promising parameter space regions, as well as to yield a good quality initial design, which only needs to be tuned using local routines. The presented technique is illustrated using three microstrip circuits optimized under challenging scenarios, and demonstrated to exhibit global search capability while maintaining low computational cost of the optimization process of only about one hundred of EM simulations of the structure at hand on the average. The performance is shown to be superior in terms of efficacy over both local algorithms and nature-inspired global methods.
© 2021. The Author(s).