I took a 2 year career break to set up my own property development business, building on the experience that I gained 6 years earlier in building my own house. In this time, I’ve learnt to manage a constantly changing workforce of up to 15 people, as well as deal with suppliers, run my own business and raise capital and funding. In the company’s first year of trading I achieved a turnover of £860K, with a 20% profit margin. The company has 6 completed houses to its portfolio.

Reporting to the Applications Executive Director of Maxim’s High Speed Signal Processing Business Unit in Boston, I provided field and sales support for high speed data converters (to 2GSPS), along with high end RF products for customers in Europe, Israel and other worldwide regions. The markets I served included WiMAX, Medical, military and HDTV, where I identified new customers, markets and assessed potential opportunities

Responsible for the co-ordination of evaluation and sample ADC/DAC and front end RF hardware to customer for Multicarrier Basestation evaluation, I also demonstrated the hardware, and authored customer literature, datasheets etc. With my BTS receiver background I was instrumental in developing a front-end architecture for the company.

The job involved significant world travel and I prided myself that I got to all my appointments anywhere in the world on time, with all necessary support hardware and customs documentation.

With Nokia I initially worked on a number of GSM EDGE Receiver projects, before joining the Research Group to develop Multicarrier Receiver architectures. It was whilst working there that I gained my patent for a Digital Pre-distortion Block down-converter for transmit/ MCPA applications: (Patent 0325891.6 approved)

My receiver knowledge includes Circuit level design and definition of each stage throughout the receiver, including mixers, amplifiers, Differential SAW filter and Analogue to Digital Converter with consideration for Smart antenna Applications.

Within my role, I acted as a Rx Group Leader: supervising and setting targets for 2 engineers and a technician as well as assisting with the suitable selection and interviewing of candidates for other roles within the transceiver development group. One of the projects was split across the Camberley and Dallas design teams and to effectively manage these, regular monthly trips to review designs were undertaken to Dallas

This was my second contract with Panasonic. I was specifically taken on to eliminate TDMA buzz within the hands free equipment of the GD30 GSM/DCS Dual-band Handset. Further work involved the testing and design evaluation of phase-error, including the elimination of problems resulting from metal plate testing

The work involved in this contract was based around the evaluation of a synthesizer loop, and its debugging and layout. Problems that were encountered included earth loop currents around the charge pump and prescaler supplies. Careful layout implementation solved these problems. Other work included the development and evaluation of a Rx front end and IF strip, along with the interstage matching of the SAW filters and the AGC algorithm

My first contract position was the development of the Tx lineup for the G450 GSM handset. Layout issues were identified and addressed prior to the handset’s type approval prior to product launch. A feasibility study into different techniques for Tx / Rx switchover in dual-band GSM handsets was also completed

In my 5 years with Motorola I progressed upwards through the ranks of the RF engineers to end up as a Senior RF Engineer before I left. My notable projects included a
• New antenna switching and calibration module for a BTS front end. I led a small team of 3 engineers though this unit’s development, and subsequently won a MENTOR-GRAPHICS Technology-Leadership award in 1996 for the PCB layout.
• The definition and procurement of a new receive front end block from several dual sourced suppliers.
• I provided development engineering’s support for the deployment of a new family of basestations during the initial roll-out stage in Vienna.
• I provided design engineering support for the world’s first complete GSM basestation Type Approval and EMC testing to 11.20 and MPT1378

In my first job after qualifying I defined the module requirements and control of the ration power budget for the specification and design of a switched mode power supply for a VHF manpack radio. Features of the power supply included current limiting, overvoltage clamping reference voltage, MOSFET switching, drive and snubber circuits.
In addition to this I became the design authority for a design of an existing front-end filter module. This was a PIN diode switched, varactor tuned filter, splitting the VHF RX band into 4 sub-bands. Inherent design problems were identified and resolved