ROBERT EVEREST JOHNSON

161 Reservoir Avenue, Randolph, N J 07869

Mobile (862) 324-1553 Home (973) 361- 9486 ravenowner232@gmail.com

Experienced Digital Electrical Engineer with primary focus on FPGA design and implementation using VHDL. My

career an even balance between military and telecommunication design environments. With a long-held interest in

digital design and programmable logic, I have worked with every major FPGA vendor, most recently with Xilinx

FPGAs and tools including their Vivado development suite, although primarily my design career has been with

Altera devices, tools and methods.

As a member of an Advanced Development Group at Andrew Corporation, I was quite productive working under

pressure, in a state of high creativity and with a strong drive to succeed. As “The FPGA Guy" among RF and

mechanical engineers, I have contributed to the success of my employers as the inventor or co-inventor on a

number of patents. My background in other fields such as Physics, digital photography and Industrial Design has

often enabled me to envision and investigate non-obvious solutions to the problems at hand.

Other skills include: LTSpice analog simulation, circuit card assembly partitioning and layout (PADs, DXDesigner),

knowledge of the JESD204B protocol, signal integrity analysis (Hyperlynx), interfacing FPGAs to DDR & QDR

memory devices, technical writing and illustration, the use customary laboratory debugging and verification, and

an understanding of the necessity of thorough validation before power-up in the lab. I am most comfortable in a

fast-paced, R&D environment where my intelligence, my positive “can-do" attitude and my ability to lead a team

by example through difficult design issues will be an asset.

Currently taking Unix administration coursework through New Jersey Institute of Technology

FIBERSPAN, INCORPORATED - Branchburg, NJ June 2014 - Aug. 2014

DSP Engineer (FPGA Design Engineer)

· Created digital synthesizer multi-tone generator using Xilinx Vivado development tools for use in a ZYNQ-based secure fiber-RF public-safety communication system.

CITY THEATRICAL, INC. - Carlstadt, NJ Feb. 2014 - June 2014

Senior Electrical Design Engineer

· Investigated root cause of a component failure upon turn-on and designed a non-obvious technique to

resolve this problem which had troubled CTI for years.

· Manufacturing duties including operating component pick and place machine. Diagnosed and repaired a

failed component in their production wave solder machine.

· Designed first article prototype of decorative lighting fixture for customer approval.

SPIRENT COMMUNICATION - Eatontown, NJ (contract employment) July 2013 – Sept. 2013

Production Engineering Support

· Analog circuit simulation to analyze the effect of a 5% tolerance resistor mistakenly entered on the BOM.

· Planned and performed environmental chamber vibration test to quantify the benefit of new mounting

brackets which provided dampening to the hard-drive.

· Performed root cause analysis of production units which unexpectedly provided insufficient RF isolation

between RF receive and RF transmit paths. A relay had been substituted without checking a key parameter.

The original relay was discontinued. Identified a distributor in China who had enough in stock to cover

planned production eliminating need to redesign the PCB.

ALCATEL-LUCENT - Murray Hill, NJ (contract employment) July 2012 – April 2013

MTS

· Design and simulation of 3.072GHz JESD204B (SERDES) interface on Altera Stratix IV device.

· Telecommunications-based system-on-chip (SOC) architecture proposal utilizing DDR3 memory

interfacing, AXI memory-mapped and AXI streaming interfaces.

· Reverse engineered lightly documented designs.

ANDREW CORPORATION - Warren, NJ June 2001– Dec 2011

Principal Electrical Engineer

· FPGA development within small R&D team that demonstrated practical RF LNA linearization using the

digital pre-distortion (DPD) technique.

· In Advanced Development Group evolved DPD technology from a fixed factory calibration, to self-calibrating

amplifiers. My DPD FPGA designs are in hundreds of thousands of wireless base stations.

· To protect crucial trade secrets, clone-proofed high-volume FPGA-based design with the complex SHA-1

encryption algorithm using an Altera PLD paired with a Maxim integrated circuit.

· Cost-reduced the self-correcting amplifiers by reducing the FPGA size requirement through clever means.

· Invented circuits I have not seen elsewhere e.g. histogram memory, efficient variable-coefficient finite

impulse response filter, random number generation circuits, many others.

· [co-]Inventor on several patents involving DPD. Others include numerically controlled oscillator.

· Inventor of routing method for wireless digital camera data traffic. FPGA data sorting algorithm.

· Designed streaming I/Q data output & capture boards controlled by Matlab over USB interface.

LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES - Whippany, NJ May 1995 – June 2001

MTS – RF Amplifier Group – Firmware

· Demonstration of DPD RF amplifier linearization. This provided the “go-ahead” for spin-off from Lucent.

· Developed embedded software in C & assembly languages, for the Hitachi, Philips, and Intel CPUs.

· Designed with a variety of FPGAs [Xilinx, Altera, Quicklogic, Atmel, Cypress, AMD].

· Supported successful defense of litigation by customer by showing flaw in their network protocol.

· Design of DSP algorithms, configurable data path, and efficient multipliers, digital filters etc.

· Fluent with customary IO interfaces e.g. SPI, I2C, RS-232 / 423. SRAM, QDR, serial FLASH.· Hardware prototype fabrication skills (machine shop).

ILEX SYSTEMS - Shrewsbury, NJ January 1994 - May 1995

Compliance Engineer – Document Compliance (for Software Directorate at Ft. Monmouth)

· Reviewed military hardware development documentation managed at Ft. Monmouth.

· Performed detailed reading of program requirements, wrote management summaries of progress on

complex projects and suggested ways of applying corrective action. Security clearance obtained.

GOODRICH /SIMMONDS PRECISION - Cedar Knolls, NJ Oct. 1992 - January 1994

Staff Engineer – Digital Design (black program experience)

· Designed / programmed PC-based accelerated-life test station for JTACMS missile fin actuator assembly.

· Developed Simmonds Precision’s first digitally-based actuator motion controllers.

· Designed digital hardware/firmware for avionic brush and brushless actuator controllers for unmanned

surveillance drones.

· Developed actuators controlled over the Mil-Std-1553 digital bus. Security clearance obtained.

EDUCATION

B.A., Fine Arts / Physics, Union College, Schenectady, NY

Master’s of Industrial Design, The Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY

Prof. Development Courses, Polytechnic Institute, Hawthorn, NY

Prof. Development Courses, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ

PATENTS

Patent US6539411 - Direct Digital Synthesizer

Patent US6812874 - Method and Apparatus for Processing Analog Signal

Patent US7409007 - Method and Apparatus for Reducing Adjacent Channel Interference

Patent US7023273 - Architecture and Implementation of digital pre-distortion Circuitry

Patent EP1062758A1 - Data-type based call routing in a wireless system

Patent EP0984556A3 - Digital Glitch Filter

Patent CA2284138A1 - Phase-shift demodulator and demodulation method using a windowing technique

< Other patents applied for >

REFERENCES

George Vella-Coleiro - Head of RF research at Andrew Corp. gvc@ieee.org

Steve Leung - RF System Simulation Expert stephen.leung@alcatel-lucent.com

Hongju Yan - Engineer at Alcatel-Lucent hongju_yan@yahoo.com

John H. Baldwin - LTE HW Manager at Alcatel-Lucent john.h.baldwin@alcatel-lucent.com