cryptoguru said:
It's all an issue of power really isn't it? ... I just want to modulate 2 weak sine waves over a carrier. How will that interfere with anything?
Well, yes it is simply an issue of power. But it is impossible to answer your question unless I know how much power.
cryptoguru said:
Plus the side-bands won't move they'll just be a tiny narrow spike that no-one outside my house will see. The carrier (if its 2.4 GHz) wouldn't be an issue as it would be like a standard wifi carrier.
I can't really explain the idea ... except to say I want to send 2 sine waves , roughly 50MHz and 500MHz on a high frequency carrier. The shorter the carrier wavelength, the better. It's for wireless use within a room.
Want to build one to test out a theory!
I'm a mathematician, not an RF engineer, but I'm a fast learner ;-)
The sidebands will fall outside any of the popular ISM bands (like those used by WiFi or cordless phones). The band at 2.4 GHz often used for WiFi ranges from 2400 to 2483.5 MHz. As a mathematician, I'm sure you will recognize that multiplying the carrier sinusoid by your 50 MHz and 500 MHz sinusoids will result in sum and difference frequencies, so if your carrier is, say, 2450 MHz, your sidebands will be at 1950, 2400, 2500 and 2950 MHz so the only one within the ISM band is the one at 2400.
But this is all nitpicking. The fact is that if you are putting out a total power of, say, 0 dBm, with a carrier at 2.45 GHz, then the chances that you will be interfering with something important is awfully low because your signal is only going to go a couple of hundred feet at best anyway, so for the sake of experimentation, don't worry about all these legal issues and just go for it.
So on your original questions, I think you will be best off by using basic RF building block chips instead of an integrated trasnceiver IC, and get the help of someone who has built RF circuits at 2.4 GHz, because they won't work if you don't. As for which building blocks, the easiest might be :
1 national LMX series synthesizer IC
1 VCO module that runs around 2.4 GHz
1 vector modulator IC for use at 2.4 GHz
Your 50 MHz and 500 MHz sine waves will be able to drive the vector modulator directly if the modulator has analog IQ inputs.