Frequency doubling, quadrupling?

Hi All,

I have a 2.5GHz synthesised source and I want a final signal of 10GHz. Now I can double twice to achieve my final frequency or I can quadruple in one swoop. What's the best way to go? Obviously doubling twice will involve a bit more work such as additional stage and filtering at 5GHz. But is there anything to be lost in performance by quadrupling in one go?

Any info/input would be great.

Cheers,

Tinx.

If the synthesizer does not tune very far in frequency, X4 is the way to go.

If it does tune far, it would be very hard to filter out the X3 and X5 spurious signals at the desired X4 output. So it would be easier to X2 it, bandpass filter, then X2 it again, and filter one more time.

Thanks for the input Biff. Yep the frequency doesn't need to shift much at all so I can provide narrow filtering. So I can x4 in one go. That simplifies things a bit :D.

Cheers,

Tinx.

take care that the synthesized frequency is highly non linear resulting x4 component at higher strength.
Other wise you need to boost the x4 component selectively.