Satellite Communications Systems Engineer

Served as Chief Engineer for C4I business area. Responsibilities included oversight of internal research and development (IRAD) activities and capital expenditure projects, establishment of technical and cost baselines for various proposal efforts and technical oversight of various programs within the business area.Lead a multi-disciplined team of 50-60 engineers in the development of radio sets for use on US Army rotary wing aircraft. The radio sets consist of two receiver transmitters (R/Ts) and three power amplifiers (PAs) providing air to air and air to ground communications at VHF, UHF and L-Band with legacy narrow band waveforms (SINCGARS, VULOS, etc) and newer networked waveforms (SRW, ANW2, WNW). The development spanned all phases from initial concept, through systems requirements review (SRR), preliminary design review (PDR), critical design review (CDR), fabrication, integration, qualification testing (MIL-STD-461/810/704,etc), and initial flight testing. Served as the Chief Engineer for GCSD Software Defined Radio Initiative. The position involved technical coordination of multiple internal research and development (IRAD) programs across the division to combine various radio platforms and software frameworks into a smaller sustainable multipurpose set of platforms and frameworks. The platforms span large platforms for wideband and protected MILSATCOM to smaller software only platforms. The position involves establishing 10 year SDR roadmaps and then monitoring the business needs of each business to ensure engineering is addressing business needs through the IRAD funding directed toward SDR. Served as the Chief Engineer for the Advanced Systems and Technology Group. Position involved reviewing technical baselines for proposals and studies in response to requests from various government laboratories and research facilities as well as providing input to direction for various internal research and development projects.

IPT lead for the Navy Multi-band Terminal (NMT) Communications Group (CG) development. The CG development effort consisted of coordinating the work of 60-70 engineers in various disciplines including circuit card development (analog, RF, digital, mixed signal, power), FPGA development, algorithm development, software development, mechanical and integration. IPT leadership required management of cost, schedule, technical (>8000 requirements), customer design review presentations (PAC, IBR, SDR, SS/HRR, PDR, CDR, TRR), MODEM SW IPT leadership, as well as Integration IPT leadership. The NMT provides EHF / AEHF / Ka / X band communications for Naval ship, shore and submarine platforms. The CG consists of all below deck equipment including MODEM functions, antenna control, prime power interfaces and terminal control monitor and alarm. The CG development consisted of over 20 custom hardware configuration items (digital, RF, synthesizers, antenna control, etc), 1 million lines of delivered software (C++, Java, C), and 80 million equivalent FPGA gates (Virtex 2), and a new crypto device. The NMT CG interfaced with existing Navy submarine mast antennas, submarine periscope antennas, and shore antennas as well as an internally developed 1.5m Q/Ka ship antenna. All systems integration was conducted under the CG development IPT and required integration of all four antennas types, integration of pseudo-monopulse antenna feeds, pedestal electronics, etc. as well as testing with on orbit assets. The culmination of the NMT development was a PT1 test in which all five configurations were tested (ship, shore, mast, periscope, SATSIM). Supported PT1 test as the Harris test conductor for the mast and periscope terminal variants. The ship, shore, mast, periscope configurations were tested over the air (OTA) against Milstar 1 and Milstar 6 payloads with LDR and MDR protocols (EC and spot beams). The CG was also tested against the Lincoln Lab SATSIM using XDR protocols (EC beams).

Director of Embedded Software DevelopmentLead the integration effort of a 2.5G CDMA wireless Internet communication system which provided portable broadband (364 kb/s) Internet service. The system development consisted of the physical, link and network layers for both the base station (BTS) and portable field unit operating in the PCS band. The effort involved the coordination of 15-20 engineers in various disciplines, 15 integration and test stations, and the integration and test of ~200,000 lines of ‘C’ and Verilog. Responsibilities included detailed planning and scheduling for software design and development (Power PC, TMS320C5416), software build planning and scheduling for the system integration effort, hands on integration and test support in both the lab and field, and daily supervision of engineering personnel.Technical Staff assigned to Systems EngineeringSystems Engineer responsible for the definition of a CDMA communications system. Tasks included definition, analysis, and simulation of the forward link pilot, paging, link quality, and traffic channels, reverse link open loop power control, open loop timing control, reverse link closed loop timing control, reverse link closed loop power control and forward link power control. Responsibilities also included link budgets, capacity analysis, and development of capacity management algorithms for both the forward and reverse links. Technical contributor for various PCS channel sounding tests and the field-test of a steerable directional field unit antenna.

Systems Engineer involved in the development of the next generation of 802.11 DSSS WLAN chipsets. Responsibilities included development of specifications for the PRISM II chipset, development of power budgets, link budgets, and analysis / simulation of system performance using Alta SPW and MATLAB. Technical contributor for the HFA3860B and HFA3861A baseband processor development. Responsibilities included development of floating point algorithms for the demodulator in the HFA3860B, the AGC, acquisition processing, and channel matched filter for the HFA3861A, and the equalizer for the HFA3863, as well as co-simulation / verification of the 3860B/3861A prior to tape-out.Provided systems engineering and applications support for the development of an analog front end (AFE) chip set for asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) MODEMs. The three-chip set consisted of a line driver (HC6054), a 14-bit A/D (HI5905), an integrated 14-bit DAC, and a programmable gain amplifier (HC6094). Designed and developed a system evaluation board which included the AFE chip set, line transient protection, hybrid, transmit and receive filters, VCXO, and FIFO interface to a TMS320C6201 Test and Evaluation Board.Provided systems analysis in support of the development of an RF chip set for IS-95 applications. Responsibilities included analytical evaluation of circuits for correct power, gain, linearity, spectral re-growth, dynamic range, etc.

Technical and cost account leader for the development of software for a signal analysis subsystem. The $2M work package involved coordinating the work of 5-8 engineers for the design, coding, integration and test of 24,000 lines of ‘C’ and embedded assembly. The application required PSK, FSK, and ASK demodulators, timing recovery, frame recovery, and estimation of various signal parameters for frequency and phase acquisition. Technical leader for the design, fabrication and field test of a prototype communication system for a small low power remote sensor. The prototype system consisted of a microprocessor controlled UHF LEO satellite transmitter, battery pack, field terminal, and base terminal. Responsibilities included conceptual design, hardware integration, software integration, and field-testing.Technical leader for the design of a TMS320C50 based digital voice communication system for wireline channels. Responsibilities included conceptual system and hardware design as well as detailed firmware design. The system included voice compression, V.33 MODEMs, framing, interleaving, forward error correction coding, and time/frequency tracking.Responsible for the design, coding, test and integration of a TMS320C25 based demodulator for an advanced frequency hopped HF communication system. The demodulator estimated receive signal power, signal-to-noise ratio, frequency offset, and multipath spread.Served as work package leader for a $380K study contract under the Army Aviation Research and Development Activity (AVRADA) for an HF based flight following system. Responsibilities included; cost, scheduling, customer presentations as well as technical leader for the system design, fabrication, test, integration, and flight-testing of the system. The system consisted of a TDMA network, which exchanged messages, and GPS derived position information between 7 airborne terminals and a single ground terminal with digital map display.

Co-op Student assigned to Cellular Radio Telephone EngineeringContributed to the development of a PLL frequency synthesizer for use in the cellular mobile product line. Responsibilities included: modulation response, acquisition time, spurious, and phase noise measurements early in the development phase and temperature testing of the complete transmitter using an HP8955A RF test system. Developed the hardware and firmware for a microcontroller-based interface to exercise the RF section of a cellular mobile phone.