Sam (Yuanshan) Chen Email & Phone Number

Santa Clara, CA, US

Autonomous Vehicle, Autonomous Driving Hardware

• Redesign of legacy product control board: Resolved 0.5mm BGA FPGA package manufacturability challenge via flexible fan-out; improved EMI performance and signal integrity
• Long-range, automotive grade rotating LiDAR boards design and bring-up activities include: Board level DCDC converters, and sensor level wireless power transformer drive stage and rectifier design; LVDS communication.
• System power consumption improvement, by improving efficiency/consumptions from: analog board component optimization; motor stator inductance and rotor magnet optimization for high speed; synchronous rectifier
• System stability improvement: motor control FW fix for HW defects; input power protection circuit optimization; system level FW power-up sequence optimization to avoid large in-rush current
• Proof-of-concept development of mid-range automotive grade rotational LiDAR with in-house design motor encoder with RLC band-pass filter sensing circuit.

San Jose, CA, US

• Analog Front-End ASIC integration and characterization: Transimpedance Amplifiers (TIA); 10MHz SPI; Low Voltage Differential Signaling (LVDS) at 30MHz DDR
• FPGA control board bring-up: FW hacks (VHDL and Verilog) for simple I/O control; customized protocol to transfer 12-bit ADC output using 8-bit field; DAC initialization; Flash memory debug...
• Sole designer for integrated thermal control module: delivery of low-noise driver board from schematics to full PCBA; integrated and tuned PID algorithm in UI app software for temperature control; modified existing.
• Design rev-ups for multiple boards, including a revision update to reduce 16 layers PCB to 10 layers with optimized high density routings.

Nanjing, Jiangsu, CN

• Hardware design works for in-house development of next-gen integrated charging control module include: component selection including ARM core uC, on-board DCDC and power architecture, sensing circuits, communication.
• Component owner of high voltage power distribution unit, key contributions include drafting technical and functional safety requirement, DFMEA, collaborated development with Tier 1 for electrical, mechanical and.
• Feature owner of DC fast charging – developed automated bench tests, and guided vehicle tests in China, advancing homologation tests on schedule with limited resources by employment of additional in-house firmware.
• Led early stage HV safety development including HV architecture, HV Interlock system design, and emergency shut-off strategy, etc.

Shenzhen, Guangdong, CN

• Hands-on soldered and tested a proof of concept inverter driver board prototype which extend ~10% bus driving range in the overall (city) driving cycle
• Modified the BYD in-house 200kW AC EVSE design to meet UL safety requirement (TUV approval)
• Utilized CAN analysis in vehicle debugging, and predictive maintenance diagnostic system project
• Maintained high voltage system NX UG models, AutoCAD schematics and BOM, and converted to organized production documentations for fast paced manufacturing
• Managed HV distribution system development projects using of 3rd party vendor fast charging technologies including 1) plug-in, 2) wireless and 3) overhead charging

Champaign, IL, US

• Collaborated with NASA in a multi-disciplinary team to develop a high power-density ( > 13 kW/kg), 1 MW electric motor to enable hybrid electric propulsion for 737-class airplanes
• Continuously improved the motor design through studies of system-level, cross-functional trade-offs, in pursuit of the balance among manufacturability, reliability and performance
• Predicted motor vibration modes analytically, and validated by ANSYS modal analysis and XLRotor rotordynamics to ensure motor dynamic stability
• Optimized high-speed external rotor structures to achieve overall weight below 170 lbs, by going over numerous iterations of structural redesign – FEA simulation loops
• Progressively designed multiple iterations of mechanical bearing systems for inside-out motor topology to maximize bearing life and decrease manufacturing complexity
• Built a 1:1 scale prototype motor in-house for high-speed mechanical rotation test, and electrical functional tests and validations

Moline, IL, US

• Interned as an electrical engineer to create high fidelity JMAG FEA motor models for electric drive team to facilitate accurate system integrations for hybrid construction loaders
• Cost-optimized rotor permanent magnet usage without compromising system level performance
• Created reduced motor models in Simulink for inverter control design capturing spatial harmonics
• Optimized procedure for internal failure projection in SR drive motor and IPM generator

Master Of Science (M.S.), Electrical Engineering

Bachelor Of Science (Bs), Mechanical Engineering