Profile
Multi-disciplined RF engineer with 25 years contract experience in all aspects of RF design including military, avionics, commercial, industrial and production knowledge, covering HF to SHF frequencies, TX powers from milliwatt to kilowatt levels.
A highly professional engineer who is self-motivated with a rational, analytical mind with excellent time management and good interpersonal and presentation skills. A committed individual and is equally at home working in a team or on their own.
EXPERTISE
• Wide range of experience from low frequencies to microwave.
• Design of low noise RF amplifiers covering a wide range of frequencies, but special emphasis at microwave and UHF frequencies
• Design of low noise synthesizers at frequencies from low UHF to about 10GHz
• Design of wide band Power amplifiers from low power to around 3kW at around 1GHz, both linear and non linear.
• Design of power compensation loops for maintaining RF power under adverse load conditions.
• Experience both in Military and commercial applications.
• Fully aware of the design limitations when applied to a Military marketplace and commercial needs in a competitive marketplace. Awareness of the importance of time to market, together with the implications of high volume design.
• Use of automatic test programming tools such as HP Vee, use of Labview.
• Extensive use of simulation tools such as ADS, MathCAD and MatLab.
• Python Scripting
ACHIEVEMENTS
• Infineon Technologies: Simulation of class E amplifier using ADS and matlab. Confirmation of theoretical results with those obtained in practice. Validation of practical measurements over temperature and voltage extremes.
• ST Ericsson: Methodical optimisation of bias and ramp shapes has yielded excellent GSM performance which has been validated over temperature and voltage ranges, resulting in a product that meets and exceeds 3GPP requirements
• Nokia: Logical approach to investigating self-generated interference resulted in reduction of development time, costs and improved time to market
• Renesas: Optimisation of PWB layout in the early stages of the board development resulted in quick evaluation times for customers and an easy to read application notes allowed for easy implementation of our chipsets in to customer products, securing good performance straight out of the box.
• Hughes Network Systems: The initial design of the three channel FM transceiver was very expensive to manufacture and setup; cross coupling was an issue. With careful printed circuit layout using a multilayer board resulted in a significant reduction in costs to manufacture as screening requirements were reduced, together with increased sensitivity, without any cross talk issues.
Career Summary
Contract Employment:
April 2014 to the present day
Consultant RF Engineer. BSkyB, Brentwood, UK.
Duration – ongoing.
BskyB are currently designing a multi-platform satellite receiver which incorporates 2.4 and 5GHz Wi-Fi with PLC, harddisk and multi-channel playback and recording capacity. The 2.4 and 5GHz WiFi uses Broadcomm solutions as does the core processor and peripheral devices.
• Responsible for all aspects of a 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi performance for four products to be launched in the next few months.
• Definition of Requirement specifications, assessment of Transmit and receive performance and evaluation of result data, collation and comparison with requirement specifications.
• OTA testing identified potential IOP and EMC issues, noise sources identified during this phase of the project were quickly resolved and any board changes, recommendations and improvements implemented.
• Performance improvements and recommendations implemented including pcb layouts impedance controlled tracks and RF layouts.
• Assessment of cost reduction implications on performance.
November 2013 to April 2014
Consultant RF Engineer. Infineon Technologies, Graz, Austria.
Duration – ongoing.
• Responsible for all aspects of a low power Transmitter for a tyre pressure monitoring system for automotive applications.
• Define requirement specifications for Low Power Transmitter.
• Design of class EF2 amplifier topology offering good efficiency over temperature (-40C to +125C) and supply voltage extremes whilst minimising component count and hence cost
• Implementation of C# and VB code to test and verify product.
• Recommended changes to evaluation board according to good RF design practices ensuring optimum performance on evaluation board.
• Simulation of output filter topology, validation of simulation results on ADS and in practice.
• Verification of final values in output filter circuit using Matlab and confirmation of results against those obtained in practice.
• Create application note for above circuit with particular emphasis on designing the matching and output circuitry which is extremely critical.
June 2013 to November 2013
Consultant RF Engineer. Aeroflex UK.
Duration 6 months.
• Responsible for all aspects of GSM/WCDMA/LTE test equipment verification and validation over temperature.
• Measurement of key performance indicators and compliance with regulations and with internal approval documents.
• Documentation of performance to show that product is manufactured and compliant with ISO standards.
March 2011 to the June 2013
Consultant RF Engineer. ST Ericsson, Lund, Sweden.
Duration 2¼ years.
• Responsible for all aspects of GSM Transmitter side of RF module for our tier 1 customers.
• Provided new PA bias methods in order to maximise GSM performance at the same time minimising current consumption.
• Provided new Ramp Shape profile to minimise Spectrum due to transients.
• Recommended grounding improvements around PA and RF ASIC to maximise RF performance.
• Suggested RF board changes to reduce RF track losses.
• Optimised existing Python Scripts to provide data output format in EXCEL
• Created EXCEL macro for presenting results in a more readable format.
May 2005 to February 2011
Consultant RF Engineer. Nokia UK, Southwood, Hampshire.
Duration 5¾ years.
• GSM and WCDMA Transmitter performance evaluation and verification
• Identified reasons for degraded phase error in GSM when at full power by changes of PWB layout, improved decoupling and good RF grounding practice.
• Resolve complex IOP/EMC issues related to interference from multiple RF systems in very close proximity to each other.
• During OTA testing (over the air testing) using generalised ‘use cases’ any potential degradation in receiver performance was identified and resolved. These typically were related to degradation in GSM RX performance when for example the display, backlight, BT or WLAN was operating. Co-operation between EMC, ESD and the mechanical department was essential in order to resolve these problems.
• As new products evolved, potential noise sources identified during previous OTA testing were implemented at an early stage requiring co-operation between many disciplines reducing further development costs and development time. This reduced our time to market considerably.
• R&D production support in Finland and China
May 2003 to May 2005
Consultant RF Engineer. Renesas Technology, Bourne End.
Duration 2 years.
• Design of an evaluation board.
• Writing application notes to ensure customers would get the best possible performance from their solution.
• In order to speed up evaluation times of the board a simple HPVee program was devised, this was fully configurable for internal use but a simpler runtime version was available for customer usage.
• Special emphasis on maintaining good performance with minimum costs, whilst ensuring good yields in a production environment.
• Optimised PCB layout for best performance whilst keeping the number of layers to a minimum (thus reducing production costs) using good RF practices. Particular care was needed with regard to grounding, ground loops, power supply routing and cross coupling.
• Use of ADS, matlab and MathCAD
• HP Vee programming
• EXCEL macro programming
• Emphasis on customer requirements in particular costs, manufacturability low component count and test times.
November 2002 to May 2003
Consultant RF Engineer. Ericsson Mobile Platforms, Basingstoke.
Duration 7 months.
• Design, development and evaluation of a quad-band GSM phone.
May 2002 to November 2002
Consultant RF Engineer. I2R, Loughborough, Leicestershire.
Duration 6 months.
• Design of a HF and UHF tag reader.
• Feasibility study on use of alternative technologies in a high volume marketplace.
• Special emphasis on low cost, ease of manufacture and highly repeatable design.
July 2001 to May 2002
Consultant RF Engineer. Sony Ericsson Mobile (formerly Ericsson Communications), Basingstoke, Hampshire.
Duration 6 months.
• Design and development of a dual band GSM phone.
February 2001 to July 2001
Consultant RF Engineer. Sendo UK, Birmingham.
Duration 5 months.
• A small start-up company specialising in low cost high volume products. The products were innovative and inventive
• RF design for both GSM TX and RX
• Supported
• Limited HP Vee programming in order to automate simple tasks for improved test time and throughput.
July 1998 to February 2001
Consultant RF Engineer. Ericsson Communications, Basingstoke, Hampshire.
Duration 2½ years.
• RF power control loop performance simulation and evaluation for GMSK/PSK mobile platform.
• RF tools such as ADS, HP Vee and LabView
November 1997 to July 1998
Consultant RF Engineer. ROKE Manor Research, Romsey.
Duration 8 months.
• RF power control loop performance simulation and evaluation using ADS.
• Evaluation of power amplifier design and control loop using HP Vee
July 1997 to November 1997
Consultant RF Engineer. Racal Instruments, Slough.
Duration 4 months.
• Design optimisation of a VXI bus microwave counter based on an existing design.
July 1995 to July 1997
Consultant RF Engineer. Hughes Network Systems, Milton Keynes.
Duration 2 years.
• Design and development of a three channel FM transceiver IF unit with auto-tuning FM demodulation and dual conversion up down converter for Inmarsat ‘A’ Land Earth Stations.
May 1995 to July 1997 ~
Consultant RF Engineer. Lucas Body Systems, Witney, Oxon.
Duration 2 months.
• Design and development of a low cost UHF alarm system for use in cars.
• Feasibility study in to alarm locations and effect of jamming signals and ‘sniffers’ to determine alarm codes.
• Determined an alternative test method to assess far field performance without the normal costs involved.
January 1995 to the May 1995
Consultant RF Engineer. PA Consulting Group, Melbourn, Cambridgeshire.
Duration 5 months.
• Design and development of a low noise synthesiser for a PMR Application.
October 1994 to the January 1995
Consultant RF Engineer. RACAL COMMUNICATIONS, Bracknell.
Duration 4 months.
• Design of a balanced Power amplifier for VHF use together with optimised filter arrangements that minimised path losses.
Brief summary of other contract experience.
As an RF engineer, the following companies have used my services; NOKIA TELECOMMUNICATIONS,GEC Marconi, GEC Plessey Avionics, STC International Marine, RACAL MOBILCAL, FERRANTI CREDITPHONE, PHILIPS RADIO COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS LTD, PLESSEY NAVAL SYSTEMS, REDIFFUSION BUSINESS ELECTRONICS, EG&G BROOKDEAL ELECTRONICS, LEIGH INSTRUMENTS, AUTOSENSE LTD, STORNO LTD.
Permanent Employment:
As a permanent employee I have worked for the following companies;
HMGCC, BBC and the Ministry Of Defence.
Qualifications
CEI pt II (1982)
HNC in Electronics (1979)
OND in Technology (1976)
