Electrical Engineer Circuit Design

Seeking a senior Electrical Engineer position in a growing team that values experience and innovation

QUALIFICATIONS

Over 20 years of expertise in Electronic System Design, including High-Speed Digital Circuit Design, Mixed-Signal/Analog Design, Bipolar Analog circuit design, COM circuit design, IC design, FPGA/ASIC Design, Embedded System Design, and PCB/FPC Layout.

Deep knowledge of Signal Integrity, EMC/EMI, ensuring optimal performance and compliance.

Proficient in VHDL/Verilog programming, RTL Coding, Linting, CDC checks, and Static Timing Analysis.

Extensive experience in board bring-up and firmware development using C and Assembly language.

Shipped a wide range of products, including HV DC/AC inverter, Ultrasonic Wireless Power Development Kits, XBOX Controllers, DSP EVMs, Life Detectors, Throat Microphones, and more.

Expertise with CPUs: RH850, ARM, TI C6000/C5000 DSP, DaVinci, OMAP3, OMAP1510, Intel x86, Motorola 68000, 68HC11, MSP430, 8085.

Hands-on experience with PCIe, AXI, Ethernet, SFI, XAUI, and USB protocols, and solid knowledge of AXI/AHB bus protocols, GigBE, USB, NAND Flash, PCIe Gen2/3, and DDR2/3/4 memory interfaces.

Proficient in industry-standard tools such as Xilinx Vivado, Quartus Prime, ModelSim, VHDL, Verilog, MATLAB, OrCAD, PADs, Altium, and PSpice for simulation and design.

Skilled in using test and measurement instruments, including Oscilloscopes, Spectrum Analyzers, Impedance Analyzers, Logic Analyzers, Signal Generators, and more.

Experienced in taking products from prototype to high-volume manufacturing, including spec definition, system analysis, component selection, circuit design, prototyping, debugging, and production management.

Proven track record as a reliable team player, independent thinker, and effective communicator.

Highly self-motivated, with the ability to learn quickly and adapt to new challenges.

Strong experience in mentoring and supervising junior engineers, fostering team growth and development.

Holder of three US patents and one international pending patent in wireless power and energy harvesting.

EXPERIENCE

Staff Electrical Engineer

Jan 2022 – Present

Seres Inc, San Jose, CA

Responsible for Electronic System Design,

Power Inverter Design & Optimization: Architected and optimized DC/AC inverters for electric vehicles, enhancing system efficiency and performance, reduced 10% components.

High-Voltage Circuit Protection: Simulated and optimized high-voltage, high-current protection circuits, significantly improving safety and reliability.

Low-Noise Analog Amplifier & Filter Design: Designed low-noise analog amplifiers and filters for sensor circuits, enhancing signal integrity and performance.

Low-Noise Switching & Linear Regulator Design: Developed low-noise switching and analog regulators to improve system stability and reduce interference.

EMC Issue Resolution: Conducted in-depth EMC analysis and resolved complex EMC issues in high-voltage inverter applications, reduced 6dB emission and passed the EMC compliance with industry standards.

Innovative Hardware Solutions: Designed FPGA/CPLD circuit with VHDL/Verilog for DC/AC inverters.

Leadership in Circuit Testing: Directed system bring-up and troubleshooting, coordinated the software team and mechanical team to ensure successful operation and performance of new designs.

PCB Design Guidelines: Authored comprehensive PCB layout guidelines to streamline production and improve design efficiency and reliability.

Test Equipment Development: Developed cost-effective Function Circuit Test (FCT) equipment for DC/AC inverter MCU boards, integrating CAN bus and software scanning for faster, more efficient testing.

Principal Electrical Engineer

Sep 2021 – Dec 2021

SprintRay Inc, Los Angeles, CA

Responsible for Electronic System Design,

Electronic System Design & Product Development: Led the architecture and design of a next-generation 3D printer electronic system, integrating iMX8M 8, LPDDR4, eMMC 5.1, WiFi, and Gigabit Ethernet, significantly enhancing performance and connectivity.

USB Connectivity Improvement: Addressed and resolved system USB connection capability issues, ensuring reliable and robust data transfer for the 3D printer.

Electrical Engineer

May 2021 – July 2021

Amazon Air (Contract through Populus Inc, remote work), Marina del Rey, CA

Responsible for Xilinx FPGA Design, High Speed Circuits design

Xilinx FPGA Design & High-Speed Circuits: Analyzed existing schematics and PCB layouts, delivering a new circuit design that reduced power consumption by utilizing FPGA internal memory instead of DDR3.

Efficient FPGA RTL Architecture: Developed an optimized FPGA RTL architecture for image processing, significantly improving efficiency and lowering power consumption by reducing the algorithm complexity and using RTL instead of the FPGA processor. Using VHDL and Verilog.

High-Throughput Simulation System: Designed a new simulation system architecture that achieved higher data throughput.

Subcontractor Guidance: Provided technical guidance and support to a subcontractor for circuit and PCB design.

Tools & Technologies: Utilized Xilinx Vivado for FPGA design and synthesis, and ModelSim for simulation and verification.

Principal Electrical Engineer

June 2016 – Mar 2021

SonicEnergy (formerly uBeam) Inc, Marina del Rey, CA

Responsible for Electronic System Design

Patent Contributions: Applied for three patents related to ultrasound energy harvesting circuits (one approved, two pending), including:

oHigh-efficiency energy harvesting circuits unaffected by phase difference.

oCircuit design for accumulating small amounts of energy to charge a battery or Super Capacitor.

oCircuit using ultrasound transducers to generate high voltage and bias electrostatic transducers.

ASIC Development: Successfully brought the uBeam Transmit Driver ASIC-IC to production, leading the bring-up, debugging, and testing through low-volume manufacturing.

FPGA Design & Debugging: Designed and debugged FPGA controllers to synchronize transducer arrays for real-time beamforming and communication with TX ASIC, resolving phase shift and shockwave issues in transmit systems.

System Design & Signal Integrity: Designed multiple generations of uBeam transmitter boards and controllers, including modular and fully integrated transducer arrays, while debugging signal integrity issues.

Transducer Modeling & Validation: Created electrical models for PZT and validated electrostatic transducer models to enhance energy harvesting performance.

High-Speed Bus Controller: Developed a PCI Express Bus Controller and an FPGA module in VHDL for the ultrasound transmitter system, including SPI bus and H-Bridge controller.

Power Management: Provided solutions to reduce inrush current, protecting the H-Bridge output port in high-power systems.

Tools & Technologies: Proficient with OrCAD, PSpice, Altium, Altera Quartus Prime, ModelSim, MATLAB, and test equipment including oscilloscopes and ultrasound pressure measurement tools.

Electrical Engineer

Dec 2014 – Sep 2015

Microsoft (Contracting through Kwest Engineering), Redmond, WA

Response for Project: XBOX Controllers (shipped millions of units)

Low Power System Design: Analyzed static and dynamic power consumption, measuring voltage, current, and power across circuits to optimize efficiency.

Board Bring-Up & Troubleshooting: Managed component preparation, powered up boards, and built/flashed bootloader and firmware using IAR compiler. Performed troubleshooting and failure analysis, integrating boards into the system.

Component Selection: Evaluated components based on system requirements, including thermal performance, power characteristics, cost, and packaging, selecting the most optimized components.

Schematic Capture & Design Review: Ensured circuit functionality, power consumption optimization (static/dynamic), and high-speed signal integrity through comprehensive schematic design reviews.

PCB Layout Review: Verified proper impedance control, signal trace topology, and mitigated potential EMI/EMC, ESD, timing, and crosstalk issues.

Signal Integrity & Power Sequence Analysis: Measured and analyzed signal overshoot, reflection, crosstalk, timing, power-on sequence, and signal propagation delays to ensure system reliability.

Documentation: Authored detailed test reports, measurement data, and analysis reports.

Tools & Instruments: Utilized tools such as Cadence Design Entry HDL, Cadence PCB Editor, Tektronix MSO5204/MSO4104B Mixed Signal Oscilloscopes, Agilent 4405B Spectrum Analyzer, and E4418B EPM Series Power Meter.

Senior R&D Engineer

Feb 2011 – May 2014

SAVOX (CON-Space) Communications LTD., Richmond, BC

Responsible for Research & Development, System Design, New Product Design

Digital/Analog Circuit Design: Led the design of low-noise amplifiers and 7-order Butterworth analog filters, reducing system noise by 23dB for improved signal clarity.

Product Innovation: Enhanced the throat microphone with a flat frequency response (0-4KHz) and increased LCD brightness by 163%, delivering significant product improvements.

Automated Testing Solutions: Developed an automated calibrator and test fixture for Delsar sensors, boosting testing efficiency by 10x and enhancing measurement accuracy by 20x.

EMC Issue Resolution: Resolved wireless PTT EMC issues, enabling the successful completion of a $500M sales order.

Life Detection Innovation: Conceptualized and defined a life detector capable of accurately pinpointing the location of victims.

Wireless System Design: Designed a 2.4 GHz FM transmitter (29dBm) and a high-sensitivity 2.4 GHz receiver (-94dB), enhancing wireless communication systems.

PCB Manufacturing & Process Improvement: Authored over 100 PCB assembly instructions, resulting in significant production efficiency gains and error-free manufacturing outcomes.

Power Supply Specification: Defined AC-DC power supply specifications to ensure optimal performance and compliance with system requirements.

Tools & Technologies: Proficient with Altera Quartus II, ModelSim, VHDL, Verilog, IAR compiler, OrCAD, Altium, PADs for PCB layout, and test instruments like spectrum analyzers, RF signal generators, and oscilloscopes.

Design Engineer

April 2010 – Oct 2010

PMC-Sierra, Inc., Burnaby, BC

Responsible for MSGU (Message Unit) ASIC Design, RTL Design, and Debugging

MSGU ASIC Design: Led RTL design and debugging for the Message Unit (MSGU) ASIC, implementing key components such as DMA controllers (2-channel, 8-queue), CPU bridges, address transformers, interrupt controllers, FIFO controllers, and AXI bus controllers. Taped out the design.

Clock Domain Optimization: Improved system performance by upgrading the MSGU from a single clock domain (300 MHz) to dual clock domains (300 MHz and 600 MHz).

Simulation & Timing Analysis: Performed comprehensive simulation, static timing analysis, and synthesis to ensure design functionality and optimization.

Tools & Technologies: Utilized Cadence Encounter for VHDL/Verilog RTL coding, Conformal Lint for code verification, ETS (Cadence Encounter Timing System) for timing analysis, NCSim for simulation, and worked within Unix/Linux environments with SVN for version control.

Senior Hardware Design Engineer

Oct 2008 – April 2010

Broadmotion, Inc., Vancouver, BC

JPEG2000 ASIC/FPGA Design: Developed a state-of-the-art JPEG2000 hardware algorithm and IP for Altera (Stratix V) and Xilinx (Virtex 5) FPGA and ASIC platforms, delivering high-performance image compression solutions.

VHDL/Verilog RTL Design: Engineered high-throughput, low-power JPEG2000 Wavelet Transformers, EBCOT Tier 1 encoders/decoders, and Arithmetic Coding CODECs for both FPGA and ASIC implementations.

ASIC Integration & Customer Collaboration: Worked closely with the customer’s Integration and Verification team in Silicon Valley, porting the FPGA IP to a 90nm, 300MHz, 10M gate ASIC. Successfully taped out and integrated into a Hollywood film camera system.

Key Project Success: Facilitated a $1MM sales order by delivering the JPEG2000 ASIC IP, which was adopted by a leading Hollywood film industry customer for use in their camera systems.

DSP Programming: Implemented JPEG2000 wavelet filters, T1 CODECs, and Arithmetic Coding CODECs in DSP.

Verification & Tools: Created a golden reference model for VHDL verification in C and utilized tools such as NCSIM, ModelSim, Altera Quartus II, Xilinx ISE, Unix/Linux, TI CCS, and SVN for development and testing.

Electronic Design Engineer

Oct 2003 – Oct 2008

Empower Technologies, Inc., Richmond, BC

System Design & High-Speed Digital Circuits: Designed the DM6446 SBC platform and OMAP591X DSK, which were selected as third-party design solutions by Texas Instruments (TI).

Award-Winning Designs: Developed the LDK591x embedded system platform, which won the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) International CES Innovations 2007 Design and Engineering Award.

VHDL/Verilog Programming & FPGA Implementation: Designed and implemented controllers for LCD, I2C, UART, CMOS image sensors, and GPIO using VHDL/Verilog.

Embedded Software Development: Programmed drivers and bootloaders using C and Assembly for low-power systems.

Schematic Capture & PCB/FPC Layout: Led schematic capture and PCB/FPC layout, ensuring optimal design performance and reliability.

PCB Simulation & Signal Integrity: Conducted PCB simulations using Hyperlynx, performing signal integrity analysis to mitigate noise and ensure design integrity.

Board Bring-Up & Troubleshooting: Managed the board bring-up process, including component testing and system debugging.

Tools & Technologies: Proficient with OrCAD, PADS, Xilinx ISE, Altera Quartus II, TI CCS, and Linux for design, simulation, and development.

R&D Engineer

Aug 2001 – Oct 2003

Image Power Inc., Vancouver, BC

FPGA Design & Data Compression: Successfully developed a data compression chip based on the JPEG 2000 standard, implemented in FPGA.

VHDL & C Development: Designed and implemented key components including the DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform) transformer, Arithmetic encoder, SDRAM controller, and FIFO using VHDL and C.

Hardware Developer

Jan 2000 – June 2001

Intrinsyc Software Inc., Vancouver, BC

Hardware Design: Led the design and development of hardware components for embedded systems, ensuring robust and efficient system functionality.

Product Design: Designed a range of consumer electronics, including navigators, microwave oven controllers, rice cooker controllers, PC motherboards, and PC display cards, contributing to innovative hardware solutions in the market.

EDUCATION & TRANING

Bachelor of Electronic Engineering

Xidian University, China

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