Black Magic Fun: 1GHz signal generator?

[hlavac]

I thought I would attempt to have some black magic fun and try to make a 1GHz test signal generator to test frequency counter prescalers using nothing more than a few transmission lines on a PCB and handful of HF transistors

I'd like to base it off a standard 100MHz crystal oscillator can I have, and basically make a 10x frequency multiplier.

Basic idea is:  Make a short 500ps pulse on rising edge of the 100MHz clock, send it along a transmission line with 10 taps spaced 1ns apart, and copy the pulse on the output as it passes each tap! Collect the tap signals using equidistant traces to the output... I should end up with 10 500ps pulses spaced 1ns apart, i.e. 1GHz signal!

To make the short pulse, I would need to sharpen the edges of the input clock somehow to be fast enough to serve as 1GHz edges, then use source side terminated transmision line shorted on the end that will generate positive pulse on rising edge and negative pulse on negative edge, and then cut off the negative pulse (have some really fast transistor turn on on the positive pulse?). Or the other way around...

Now for the questions:

• Can anyone recommend some high frequency capable transistors that work in gigahertz ranges?
• Are there diodes that fast? I presume not... PIN diodes are not really diodes on HF right?
• Any good sources of info on controlling impedance of PCB traces / transmission lines?

[hlavac]

Yes, but where is the fun in buying that?

Here is the whole silly concept I had in mind.

[C]

Not my thing,

but in fun, it sounds like you are talking about a wagon wheel with a 1 ns time between spokes.
zap an LC with the right timing and you have an oscillator.
So, If you have a complete wheel you have a chance to build on the energy from before.
going crazy further, what if you connected your square wave 100 Mhz logic output to a wheel with the proper delay such that the wheel reinforces the logic output and the logic output reinforces the wheel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_oscillator

C 

[nctnico]

Yes, but where is the fun in buying that?

Most of those boards from Ebay don't make a clean 1GHz. There is loads of harmonics so you'll need filtering.

[cwz]

There are tons of frequency synthesizers are out there that can easily do this.  For example, see this part from Silicon Labs:

https://www.silabs.com/Support%20Documents/TechnicalDocs/Si5325.pdf

TI, Analog, IDT, Hittite (if you want stuff really in the microwave range), etc.

As was already mentioned on here, you're probably just best off buying a ref board from one of the manufacturers.  It will almost certainly cost you more to make a one off, even just the cost of the PCB fab.