In this paper we discuss the effect of discretization on the azimuthal pattern of circular ring array. One of the characterizations of the circular ring is discretizing the array elements on the azimuthal plane. The discrete array excitation is a sampled version of the continuous case. The elements are feed with a linearly increasing phase which gives rise to a corresponding phase mode excitation. Although, in the discrete case we also obtain harmonics in addition to the fundamental phase mode. The phase mode excitations of the azimuthal plane are discussed for two different element separations. The higher-order Bessel functions decay rapidly with an increasing order and hence higher excitation phase modes radiate poorly. For a given diameter array; to minimize the impact of these distortion modes, small element separations are required. The program is written using python and the simulation results are discussed for an eight element circular array. © Research India Publications.