Product Design Rf Engineer

Leo J. Lanctot Jr.

South Lyon, MI 810-***-**** *********@*****.*** https://www.linkedin.com/in/leo-lanctot/

Sr Lead RF Engineer

Accomplished Lead RF Engineer with over 15 years of RF Comms experience. Highly skilled in leading new innovative RF designs and developments to meet challenging application requirements. Experienced in all facets of RF design and product development life cycle from advanced research, RF link budget analysis, requirements, design, and development through launch into production. Managed and engineered RF system and product design, development, and launch in Automotive and Defense industries. Automotive experience includes the RF system design for cellular, satellite and terrestrial radio also including the development of hardware and software, RF circuits, antennas, and radar. Led Defense developments in the RF system, network, software, and hardware design of tactical, terrestrial, and satellite radios and antennas. New leading-edge system and product designs were successfully launched into high-volume production.

Areas of Expertise

Technical Leadership RF/Microwave Systems Engineering SATCOM & Terrestrial Link Budget Analysis G/T, ERIP, Noise Figure Waveform Analysis Modulation QPSK, 8PSk, 16QAM, etc Error Correction Techniques CRC, FEC, Hamming, etc Software Defined Radio (SDR) & Digital/IF Architecture Antenna Design Circuit Design Phased Array Beam Steering DoA Signal Processing Algorithm Development Matlab RF Front Ends LNBs, Filters, IQ mod/demod RF Propagation Wireless Communications High-speed RF Networks HW/SW System Design RF Testing Spectrum/Network Analyzers, Signal Generators Link Budget Analysis RF Design RF Simulation IP Generation Product Development Lifecyle Root Cause Analysis Design for Manufacturability (DFM)

Professional Experience

General Motors, Warren, MI April 2023 - May 2025

Lead Connectivity Technical Standards Engineer

GM technical representative to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (BT SIG) regarding standards development. Advocated for GMs' interest in the Bluetooth (BT) Standards Setting Work Groups. Develop solutions for BT Channel Sounding.

Advised GM SW, System and Product Management on BT SIG developments which established a future product roadmap.

Conducted a BT Channel Sounding RF system link budget study based on Packet Error Rate to determine range of connectivity between a vehicle and device for digital key applications which resulted in requirements established.

Collaborated with Chip manufacturers, Tier ones, on the embedded system algorithm/software solutions for BT Channel Sounding procedures for vehicle digital key applications resulting in changes to the BT standard and a new robust algorithm improving performance in a noisy RF environment.

Analyzed BT Channel Sounding RF communication link considering the RF environment, transceiver, and the standard regarding latency resulting in the development of a new efficient digital key software algorithm design.

Designed an antenna selection and calibration strategy to utilize all MIMO antenna paths and implement in the Host Controller Interface software stack for BLE channel sounding, resulting in a patent.

Established a coexistence study including BT, and Wi-Fi technologies supporting GM connectivity, and infotainment features resulting in a functionality map and requirements for RF isolation and antenna architecture. applications.

Led the GM product development teams to ensure software interoperability compliance with Bluetooth BT and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) radio and software stack qualification requirements and meeting global regulations.

Intellectual property disclosures issued resulting in patent submissions, patents pending and patent awarded.

Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, MI August 2013 – April 2023

Lead System Core Radar Engineer, April 2022 - April 2023

Lead Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave Radar (FMCW) Engineer for in-cabin child presence detection and truck bed intrusion detection.

Supported ADAS and developed requirements for the new radar application based on research and technical analysis.

Established Radar requirements for antenna array, RF link budget, chirp design, IF required, DSP, range / doppler cube size, memory required, and latency.

Employed Altair Feko in the design and simulation of the antenna array for the intrusion detection scanning radar.

Technical analysis of Radar SoC, including the microprocessor, controllers, I/O, security, and embedded software.

Achieved approval to proceed with proposed radar design and specifications to work with Purchasing on a quotation.

Lead RF Systems Engineer / Lead Core Antenna Engineer, August 2013 - April 2022

RF System design and development of satellite and terrestrial connectivity and communication including 4G/5G Cellular, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS L1/L5), and Satellite Digital Audio Radio Service (SDARS) including antennas and modems for vehicle applications. RF antenna design, development and test for the components and vehicle systems.

Developed an RF Link Budget tool for GNSS satellite systems and performed the ADS Genesys and SystemVue simulations analysis and established system, antenna and modem requirements considering RF propagation, noise temperature, G/T, intermodulation, gain/loss cascade, and the Receiver RF Front End.

Established RF system architecture from the system requirements for 4G/5G MIMO cellular, cellular vehicle to infrastructure (CV2X), GNSS, Wi-Fi, and SDARS which drove the antenna and RF front end designs.

Authored RF packaging requirements to comply with the RF Performance and Exposure Limits.

Established requirements for the coexisting of antennas and RF modules including isolation and linearity.

Developed test methods to evaluate 4G/5G MIMO cellular, satellite GNSS and SDARS at the component and vehicle level.

Performed Antenna design and simulation using CST and Feko, circuit design using ADS, and RF system using ADS Genesys.

Simulated using FEKO and measured antennas on-vehicle to establish RF performance and packaging requirements.

Designed and developed a creative low-profile combination antenna concept, “Roof Ridge Antenna,” to resolve a problem on the F150 truck regarding antenna height and retaining RF performance.

Harris RF Communications, Rochester, NY August 2008 – August 2013

RF Engineering Manager

Completed the hardware design to support a new military MUOS SATCOM satellite communication waveform, which was an industry first. Designed, developed the transmitter and receiver to support MUOS in the Falcon III tactical manpack radio.

Performed RF System simulation of Propagation and RF Link Analysis, which drove the system design, including antenna, hardware architecture, duplexers, receiver, and transmitter performance requirements for satellite and terrestrial comms.

Designed changes of tactical radio RF, Digital, microcontrollers, and DC circuits to recent technology, resulting in cost savings, battery life extension, and higher data rate communication.

Completed component selection, schematic capture, PCB layout, test, development, and manufacturing.

Drove a modern design process for power amplifiers to use load-pull and X-parameters to characterize and analyze power devices for non-linear performance using Agilent ADS.

Drove a design process utilizing simulation tools such as Agilent ADS for circuit design, Agilent Genesys for system design, and HFSS for antenna design.

Addressed complex problems in manufacturing by troubleshooting analysis and testing to find the root cause and identify solutions that range from component parameter tolerance drift to assembly.

Successfully managed product development according to process and met budget, schedule, and quality targets.

Harada Industries Of America, Novi, MI Oct 2001 – May 2008

Research and Development Manager / RF Engineering Manager

Created innovative designs for the successful launch of antennas for AM/FM/DAB/SDARS/GNSS and cellular. Specified and managed Antenna Range upgrade, resulting in successful implementation of on-vehicle measurement capabilities for high frequency development, securing GPS, cellular, and satellite radio antenna business.

Established an RF lab with Network Analyzers, generators, and equipment for the development of antenna amplifiers.

Researched and developed new antennas and RF amplifiers for automotive OEM applications, including Cellular, GPS, SDARS, AM/FM, and Bluetooth.

Global technical leadership resulted in new innovative combination antenna product designs (Cell/GPS/SDARS).

Designed and simulated antennas using HFSS, used Ansoft Designer for LNA, and PCB layout done with Mentor Graphics.

Supported Quality in finding root causes of manufacturing issues.

Secured and managed budget for R&D activities, which supported the successful new product development and launch.

Education

MS, Master of Science in Electrical Engineering

University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Professional Education for Engineering and Applied Science, Amherst, MA

Focus on Microwave Engineering, RF Systems, Circuits, Devices, and Antenna Design

BS, Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering

Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, MI

AAS, Associate of Applied Sciences in Electrical Engineering Technology

Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI

Organizations

Institute Of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Antennas & Propagation, Microwave Theory and Techniques, and Communications Societies

Notable Mentions

Author of papers on antenna system topics in Bluetooth, 3GPP 4G/5G MIMO Cellular, and GNSS

Patents related to RF systems, wireless, cellular, antennas and GNSS.

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