t was theoretically and experimentally proved that High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) Maglev had huge potential employment in rail transportation and high speed launch system. This had attracted great research interests in practical engineering. The optimization design was one of the most important works in the application of the HTS Maglev. As the NdFeB permanent magnet and HTS materials prices increased constantly, the design optimization of the permanent guideway (PMG) of HTS maglev became one of the indispensable works to decrease the cost of the application. This paper first reviewed four types of PMGs used by the HTS Maglev, then disucssed their structures and magnetic fields. Finally, the optimization methods of these four PMGs were compared. It was suggested that with better optimization methods, the levitation performance within a limit cost got better. That would be helpful to the future numerical optimization of the PMG of the HTS maglev.
