[TowerTalk] Analysis of phase errors for transmit phased arrays

[Jim Lux]

I've done some modeling of the effect of errors in the phase on phased 
arrays for transmitting. This is applicable for both stacks and for arrays 
such as 4 squares and the like.  The overall summary is that you can 
tolerate fairly large errors in excitation phase without degrading the 
forward gain by much.  In numbers, if you control the phase to within 45 
degrees, in 99.7% percent of the cases, you'll lose less than a half dB.

This is one of those things where the basic idea is well known: middling to 
small errors in transmit phasing doesn't have huge effects on forward gain; 
but now I have numerical data for specific cases and statistics.

The writeup and graphs are at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~w6rmk/antenna/phased/txtol.htm

I'd love to get comments.

Thanks
Jim, W6RMK