Curricula Vita for Alan Francis Bate B.Eng., (Hon’s)

Available for contract from 21st Oct 2016

Home contact: 012**-****** Mobile: 079********

Position Applied for: Analogue H/W Design Engineer SMPS/ RF, LF to GHz /EMC

Key technical Skills

Analogue design, active filters, amplifiers, phase sensitive detectors, A/D and D/A converters. passive and active filters, EMC Filters, LED drivers

Switched Mode Power supplies, SMPS, Current mode, Buck, Push/Pull, Fly-back, Bridge, Half bridge, aerospace and commercial

EMC trouble-shooting/debugging. Ground plane noise ingress in mixed signal systems, resonance. Partitioning of ground planes. EMC filter design

Control theory. Use of LT SPICE, Tina Pro SPICE general analogue and SIMetrix-SIMPLIS to model loop stability of SMPS

Closed loop PWM stability analysis using SIMetrix-SIMPLIS

Thermal CFD Modelling using FLOWMERICS

Technical Report writing for ESA documentation, e.g. Requirement specifications, Design Reports, Worse Case and stress analysis, Test Plans, Test Procedures. Technical Proposals. Work Packages, Cost breakdowns. Gantt charts. Technical content to aerospace bid proposals for ESA and Astrium and Thales.

Altium ECAD schematic entry, library creation and BOM preparation for PCB layout.

Reliability predictions, constant failure rate with component wear out analysis using Weibull and Relex for MTBF and AFR prediction.

MCAD using Solid Works and Pro Engineer

Work Experience

Control Data Services/ Rolls-Royce (Birmingham Business Park, Solihull))

Contracted from 18th January, 2016 to current date. (One month’s notice)

Contract senior analogue design for harsh military power supply using fly back pre-regulator and LDO post regulator topology. To be used as a common circuit block throughout Rolls-Royce to provide logic supply power with galvanic isolation.

PureLiFi (Edinburgh)

Contracted from 16th March, 2015 to 31st August 2015

Contract senior analogue design for PIN diode, low noise 20MHz opto-receiver for digital link over LED light

SMPS PSU design for base station and optical transmitter

TDK-Lambda UK

Senior PSU design engineer. Contracted from 13th October to December 2014.

Assistance to project leaders in troubleshooting EMC and over-heating issues of existing single phase and three phase prototype SMPSU designs for the DIN Rail market.

Thales Alenia Space (Company takeover from SEA in June 2014)

June 2014 to 5th Sept 2014

Aerospace Division of SEA purchased by Thales.

Systems Engineering and Assessment Ltd, SEA

Earth Care scientific satellite program

Design development of power conditioning for Broad Band Radiometer, BBR Instrument.

This involved design of current mode SMPS converter for instrument stepper motor PWM drive and PWM switched heaters. Topology used, buck pre-regulator followed d by push pull converter. This design has been used on other EarthCare instrument programmes, ATLID and MSI. PWM control of stepper motors using current controlled full switched bridge.

Stirling Power Converter

Part of nuclear sourced power system for operation in deep space.

Design of prototype electronic power conditioning system. Topology used one cycle control, bridge-less boost converter and analogue active clamp followed by current controlled buck pre-regulator/PP converter combination and output analogue active clamp. Input 40V ac at 100Hz. Output 100Watt, 28V regulated spacecraft bus.

Note:

SEA has just been acquired by Thales Alenia Space with aim to build up into UK division of parent company.

Position and current work were unchanged. See SEA details below.

2008 to present. System Engineering & Assessment Ltd (SEA), Filton, Bristol

Senior Design Consultant (Aerospace)

Prototype Cryo-cooler power conditioning system.

SMPS Boost converter followed by Buck regulator providing active filtering of large pulsating current load from compressor plus conventional SMPS power conversion.

Prototype Stirling engine thermal power conversion system

Designed power conditioning electronics. 40V rms 100Hz ac to 28V dc regulated spacecraft bus

Design uses Bridgeless boost converter with one cycle control followed by real resistance load and clamp. Buck pre-regulator followed by push pull converter provides isolation and multi rail output. Buck is current controlled and output regulated by an active shunt. Important to present a constant load with real resistance to Stirling Engine linear ac generator. Passed Critical Design Review with ESA. Next prototype build phase

EarthCare ESA scientific satellite

Design of PWM stepper motor and PWM heater drives. Part of an Instrument Control Unit (ICU) for Broad Band Radiometer instrument.

Design also used on the MSI and ATLID Instrument Control Units

Avionics Division, Oxley Developments Ltd.

EMC Consultant, Contract for three months

De-bugging EMC issues. US Military helicopter LED lighting electronics.

Cost effective pre-compliance proposals and set up. Proposed outdoor test set-up

Thermal modelling (using new Flomerics EFD software) of cockpit switched displays using bulb replacement solid state lighting. Due to polycarbonate switch housing, cooling only through cable harness. Recommended power specification with a minimum defined cable

November 2006 –March 2008: Pace Micro Technology, Saltaire, W Yorkshire

Thermal Consultant.

Assist development engineering in all aspects of thermal design, including thermal simulation of the company products using CFD, FEA software.

October 1998- November 2006: Pace Micro technology, Saltaire, W Yorkshire

Senior Hardware Design Engineer.

Responsible for the development of satellite and cable set top products for the US market.

Experienced in base-band video and audio processing and general hardware.

RF front-end and digital electronics development. Design/optimization of video buffers, DC/DC converters, SDRAM\FLASH operation, serial buses, LNA, Tuner IC’s, diplexers, downstream and upstream electronics.

EMC fault finding, particularly in band noise (spur) elimination and noise ingress issues.

Introduced the Moat and drawbridge concept of front end ground plane partitioning to the company. Proved concept by 2D E/M simulation in Microwave Office.

Reliability modelling to predict MTBF and AFR, using Relex reliability software.

Failure rates derived from Weibull failure data for wear out mechanisms, hard drives and fans.

Chi-square distribution derived failure rate data for semiconductors using company field data.

June 1998- October 1998 IMI Watson Smith

Project Leader

Responsible for the electronics development of sleeve-valve pneumatic pressure regulators using electronic feedback control system.

June 1997 - June 1998 Excel Electronics

Project Leader:

Responsible for the design from concept to manufacture of electronic custom products for the rail industry. Design of “DC/DC transformer” current monitor for carriage heater control. Used transductor technique I learnt from MSDS at Portsmouth.

Sept 1994 - June 1997

Completed B Eng. (Hon’s) in electronics at University of Leeds having specialised in;

Microwave Engineering and Communications

January 1993 Aug 1994

Completed the following while training for work at York Computing Centre, York and ITEC, Leeds.

Data processing NVQ 3.

NVQ 2 in CAD using Auto CAD V10.

Programming in C to NVQ 3

COBOL to NVQ 2

Jan 1992 - Dec 1992 Equity and Law and City Bank Life Financial Consultant.

This proved to be a wrong career decision; resulting from redundancy when the industry was in recession.

1989 - Dec 1991 Farnell Instruments Plc, Wetherby, N Yorkshire

Project Leader:

Transferred to Farnell with the same duties when F.I purchased my existing employer, Wayne Kerr Electronics. Continued with 200VA high AC add on.

1980- 1989 Wayne Kerr Electronics Ltd, Bognor Regis

Project Leader

Responsible for the development of LCR Instruments. Last project, design of a new system for measuring the impedance of power inductors at their working drive levels of up to 500V at 200 VA. The prototype was successfully shown at the 1989 US Coil Winding Show in Chicago and to key customers throughout the US. I assisted in a marketing capacity in visiting these key American customers.

Designed an add-on unit for realistic measurement of power inductors with up to 100 amps of DC bias. Model number, WKR3220

1980- 1985 Wayne Kerr Instruments Ltd, Bognor Regis

Development Engineer.

Designed the bulk of the analogue and digital hardware for the company’s most successful instrument (WK 3245 Precision Inductance Analyser). Gross sales over £8 M by 1993.

Design of quantised feedback (1 bit) A/D converter with 22 bit resolution, ultra linear phase detector

(multiplier/mixer), programmable active filters. Synthesised 8 levels by 16 time sample sin wave generator. Discrete bipolar power amplifier. Precision range amplifiers, linear regulators etc.

1978-1980 Weir Electronics Plc, Bognor Regis

Senior Engineer

Completed development of a 21 KVA water cooled three phase, 415V power conditioning system for a 10 Watt Argon laser. Developed a multi rail switch mode power supply for military radar. The system was designed to operate from a 48V Army vehicle supply.

1973 - 1978 Marconi Space and Defence Systems Ltd, Frimley & Portsmouth

Development Engineer, satellites.

In the above position I had development responsibilities on military ground and commercial satellite projects at the MSDS Portsmouth and Frimley sites, projects included;

Infra-red video signal processing chain for METEOSAT weather satellite.

UK 5 Experimental satellite attitude control system. (Telemetry control of attitude steering jets).

Thick film re-packaging exercise of the UK 5 satellite power sub system. Weight and size reduction project for the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough.

Power conditioning sub system for MAROT’s military communication satellite which processed solar panel power into stabilised DC supplies and charged Ni-Cad battery pack at optimum rate.

Small PSU for British Army codex. Part of Clansman Army communications system that had to have very low noise emission for data security.

1971 - 1973 Gresham Lion Ltd, Hanworth, Middlesex, West London

Junior Development Engineer

Designed a range of linear power supplies, named the Gresham GLP Range. Completed the design of a multi rail linear blower cooled PSU for GEC Traffic Computers.

1965 - 1971 Solartron Electronics PLC, Farnborough Hants

Test Equipment Design engineer

Designed a wide variety of in house test equipment

Production Test Engineer

Production testing of the company’s range of control system test instruments.

Service Engineer:

Serviced the company’s very wide range of laboratory test instruments.

1963 - 1965 Wireless Branch, General Post Office, Goonhilly Downs, Cornwall

Apprenticeship Training.

Stationed at;

GPO, Radio Branch, Goonhilly Downs Satellite Ground Station - Helston, Cornwall

GPO, Dollis Hill Research Laboratories, London NW for one year apprenticeship course

GPO Engineering School- Stone, Staffordshire for 6 weeks basic Ac and DC theory course

Education

1994 - 1997 University of Leeds

B Eng. (Hon’s), Electronic and Electrical Engineering. June 1997

1969 - 1971 Farnborough-Hants

HNC Electronics.

1964 - 1965 Camborne-Cornwall

ONC Electronics. May 1965

1960 - 1963 Camborne Cornwall

Eight GCE O-Levels. AEB Board

Professional

Member of the IEEE

Courses and Seminars

Premier EDA Solutions. “Schematic Capture with Altium Designer Introductory Tutorials”. March 2013

PTC. Three day training course in Pro/Engineer 3D CAD software.

XILINX Training Course, “Introduction to VHDL”. February 2004

CFDesign: One day training course for use of their FEA thermal modelling software.

Flowmerics course “Advanced Thermal Analysis of Electronic Systems using FLOWTHERM V3.2”

Telelogic, “C Programming Techniques for Embedded Systems”. October 2000

Open University under Graduate Module in RF Design.

Oxford University Seminar “Printed Circuit Board Design for Real World EMI Control”. December 2003

Integrated Computer Systems, “Effective Skills for technical Managers”. May 1988

Publications

Circuit Cellar, Electronics Magazine. “Third Overtone Crystal Oscillator”, Dec 2006 issue.

Electronics World, "Modern Impedance Measurement Techniques", Dec. 2002, Jan 2003, Feb 2003, Mar 2003.

Patents

Pace Micro technology:

Improving the cooling efficiency of hard disk drives via a heat sink that created turbulence over the HDD body.

Wayne Kerr Instruments Ltd

Transformer multi test facility using a turn-table for high speed production testing.

Awards

Pace: £200 for developing a VBA /Excel Spreadsheet utility to convert Pace part code to appropriate reliability data for importing into Relex MTBF prediction software via a standard CAD interface

Pace: £200 pounds towards patent described above.

Personal Details

Marital Status: Married

Driving Licence and car owner.

Location: UK wide for contract position; Yorkshire/Bristol for permanent position

Place of Birth; Looe, Cornwall, UK

Nationality: British.

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