Impact of random phase error on microwave power combining efficiency

With the mathematical statistics method, the impact of random phase error with arbitrary probability distribution on power combining efficiency of antenna array was analyzed. The analytic relationship between random phase error and expectation of combining efficiency of N-element antenna array was provided, which makes it easy to evaluate the impact of random phase error on array combining efficiency with fast-Fourier-transform (FFT) technology. As examples, the impact of random phase error with three typical distributions, uniform, Gaussian, and triangular distributions was discussed with the proposed analytical method.