About me
This page contains biographical information (you can use the contact link at the foot of the page to send me messages).
Background
For a large part of my working life, I was in full time employment at the Central Research Laboratories (CRL) of EMI, which became Thorn EMI and then Scipher. CRL was founded in the 1920s, and has a long record of achievement and technical innovation including the world's first public high definition television service, the first modern stereo records, radar to counter the WW2 night bomber, and the X-ray scanner for which the late Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, who was also based at CRL, received a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1979.
I worked as a Staff Scientist in the Wireless Group at CRL, and had experience in various other departments of the Laboratories, have a Masters' Degree in Microwaves and Modern Optics, and a BSc in Microelectronics and Computer Engineering. I am registered as a Chartered Engineer with the Engineering Council, and am a Member of the IET (formerly the IEE) and the IEEE.
My experience includes:
- Lighting control systems
- Fire alarm systems
- Frequency sources up to 13GHz
- Microwave absorbing materials
- Advanced electronic surveillance and counter-surveillance
- Spread spectrum communications
- Leaky feeder communications
- Gigabit/s rate digital logic
- Multi-chip modules
- Gigabit/s rate digital to analogue conversion
- Inductive tag reader antennas
- Software Defined Radio
- RF power sources for electrodeless discharge lamps ("Plasma Lamps")
- EMC analysis
- High speed A/D and D/A
- Impedance analyser
- Digital signal processing
- Spread spectrum radio
- Frequency synthesis
- Frequency multiplication
- RF amplifiers
- FMCW radar
- Direct Digital Synthesis
- Antenna design
- Radio wave propagation measurement and prediction
- Modulation
- Fast Fourier Transform
- Induction loop communications
- Security sensors
- Power supplies
- PCB layout for RF, microwave, gigabit/s logic and EMC control using Altium Designer, and other tools
- Linear RF and non-linear (SPICE) circuit simulation
- Circuit design, development and ATE for ECM systems
- Noise generators for prototype proximity fuzes
- Amateur radio
- C/C++
- Windows GUI, Visual Studio, Code::Blocks, wxWidgets
- Embedded processors, particularly the Hitachi SH, PIC, and Intel '86 families.
- RTOS design and implementation
- Interfacing GSM and GPS modules
- Communication protocols
- Multithreading
- Syntax analysis and parsing
- POV-RAY
- Other computer languages of largely historical interest such as Algol68 and Fortran.