A Simple Introduction to Quantum Annealing in Antennas and Propagation

The objective of this paper is to introduce the application of quantum annealing (QA) to electromagnetic (EM) engineering. We demonstrate that numerous EM design and inverse problems naturally admit a mathematical formulation in terms of binary quadratic interactions. By utilizing didactic, simplified examples, we illustrate how this underlying physical structure allows for a direct mapping of EM problems onto Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) models and equivalent Ising Hamiltonians. All numerical experiments are conducted using Simulated Annealing as a classical proxy, since the primary contribution of this work is the QUBO formulation itself rather than its execution on quantum hardware. Our results suggest that a broad class of EM problems—including array thinning, reconfigurable intelligent surface optimization, subarray partitioning, and electromagnetic inverse scattering—are suitable candidates for optimization using near-future quantum annealing architectures, once hardware connectivity and noise floors reach the required specifications.