Bruce Olney

Provided technical leadership for all embedded systems development for the company, including:


• Firmware/hardware design of ultra-miniature, ultra-low power, wireless sensor; including:
  • Sagem GSM/GPRS modem for telemetry and control.
  • Core circuitry:
    • SiRF Star-III AGPS receiver.
    • Non-volatile mass-storage using 2Gb NAND flash.
    • Atmel ATmega2560 AVR Microcontroller.
    • Miniature voice recorder subsystem described below.
  
  
• Firmware/hardware design of ultra-miniature, ultra-low power, wireless image sensor; including:
  • Proprietary (CRANE Co., Aerospace & Electronics) UHF transciever IC for telemetry and control.
  • Custom protocol between transciever IC and AVR using a 6-wire SPI interface as physical layer. Link layer was based on SMPTE RP 113-1996.
  • USB interface device controller.
  • Core circuitry described above.
  • Design specification for image capture circuitry using a Xilinx CPLD.
  
  
• Hardware/ firmware consultant role for a miniature, low power, video imager system; including:
  • Dual PowerPC hard cores in Xilinx Virtex II.
  • Boot system, including boot from NAND flash.
  
  
• Firmware/hardware design (baseband) and hardware bringup of an ultra-miniature/very low power SEIWG-05 transciever prototype.
  
  
• Software/firmware design of miniature wireless voice recorder system.
  • Extreme low power design, powered by very small rechargable lithium-ion coin cell.
  • ADPCM speech compression.
  • Non-volatile storage implemented in high speed MRAM.
  • Radio control via 802.15.4 transciever IC (physical & link layer for ZigBee protocol).
  • Firmware (Atmel AVR ATmega128L) implemented in EC++ using IAR Embedded Workbench compiler.
  • Windows test/demo/control application implemented in C++ using Visual Studio.NET.
  
  
• Peer reviews, project management/scheduling, management of subcontractors, recruiting and interviewing.

DSP firmware design (DSP56L307/DSP56321) and prototype hardware bringup of Master Control audio metering subsystem (64 channels of 24-bit 48kHz AES digital audio streams).

Digital hardware/firmware design of RF up/down converters. This involved Verilog HDL programming for a Xilinx CPLD and C programming on a Renesas M16C microcontroller. Identified and resolved hot-standby hardware and firmware design errors. Identified and resolved manufacturing process problems. Authored technical user's manual. Provided engineering level technical support to customers, manufacturing, marketing and management.

Linux embedded (ARM) hardware/firmware bringup.
• Customized, extended and maintained Linux boot system (ARMboot/U-Boot).
• Ported threads library (from Coldfire/x86/DSP56xxx) to allow multi-task design of diagnostic routines/power-on self test in boot system.
• Added diagnostic debug routines to assist hardware designers, manufacturing and field engineers.


• Linux device drivers on dual ARM processors.
  
• Estimated Compact Flash (SanDisk) life expectancy based on measured usage patterns.
  
• Implemented In-System-Configuration (IEEE-1532 ISC) system for field updates of FPGA configurations.

Complete hardware/software design of UHF/VHF FM radio modem.


• Hardware:
  • Phase I prototype used off the shelf modules (modem, DSP-EVM, power supply, enclosure).
  • Phase II custom single PCA with on-board.
    • External modem replaced with CODEC and DSP (DSP56857) routines.
    • External power supply replaced with on-board regulators.
    • Achieved manufactured cost goals.
    • Achieved power consumption goals.
    • Achieved completion deadline.
    • Supervised work of sub-contractors (analog design, mechanical design).
    • PCB design using Eagle PCB (I own a full professional license).
    • Initial prototype assembly/rework completed by myself (I own a fully equiped lab, including Metcal soldering/rework tools, microscope, static protection, etc.).
      


• Software:
  • Ported threads library (from DSP563xx) to allow multi-task design of non-real-time items.
  • Implemented bootstrap loader to boot from serial flash.
  • Implemented Windows application and firmware to update firmware and software in embedded serial flash.
  • Implemented soft-modem in DSP.
  • Implemented various Windows demonstration/test applications using Visual C++ and Borland C++ Builder.

Firmware/software design and implementation to support digitally tuned RF Filters for avionics use.
• Firmware for Atmel AVR using proprietary RTOS.
• Windows support software using VB.NET.

Firmware/software design to support SOC ASIC. Prototype completed with an Altera SOPC.
• Firmware for HC05 and HC08 CPU core.
• Software and device drivers (Windows) using Visual C++ and VB6.
• Including:
  • Ink jet printer engine firmware using proprietary RTOS.
  • IEEE-1284 device driver (DLLs, VXD).
  • Flash update routines.
  • ROM Bootstrap loader to boot from external flash.
  • Debug kernel in ROM.
  • Custom macro language in firmware with compiler, debugger and simulator on PC.

Firmware/software design and hardware integration of Automatic Digital Audio Translation Mixer (TV broadcast). Each system included four DSP56307 DSPs, an NEC V25 and HC08s in booth control panels.
• Designed/implemented entire DSP firmware architecture except for a few DSP algorithms designed by another sub-contractor.
• Designed/implemented device drivers on V25 to boot and communicate with the DSPs.
• Designed/implemented entire HC08 firmware for translation booth control panels.
• Designed/implemented Windows utilities and device firmware to update flash.

Device drivers for PCMCIA/MiniPCI Ethernet NICs and Modems.
• Designed/Implemented a portable WinModem device driver architecture to support both Linux and Windows WDM.
• NIC device drivers for Windows, DOS and NetWare.

Firmware/hardware design of professional broadcast TV digital/analog, audio/video, control equipment.
• Firmware architecture and design of MC68HC08 based inteligent DA/PS controllers. Firmware support to hardware engineers for initial prototype bringup.
• Hardware/Firmware design of PC104 coprocessor card (processor Coldfire MCF5206E).
  • Dual Port Memory communication interface with main processor (MPC860/Pentium) over PC104 bus.
  • FPGA (Xilinx) design using Verilog HDL. Test bench using ModelSim.
  • Coprocessor booted/reprogrammed by main processor.
  • Custom proprietary RTOS ported from prior project.
  • Run-time replaceable, reloadable sub-modules without affecting operation of existing running modules.
  • Custom proprietary Flash File system.
  • Design/Implement/test of VxWorks device drivers/BSP to support the new card.
  
  
• Firmware design/implementation for AES/EBU digital audio patch box. Main processor Coldfire MCF5206, four DSP56303 coprocessors.
• Hardware/Firmware design of three-stage audio/video routing switcher test system.
  • M68HC11 based 1024 output digital video signal generator.
  • PC hosted (DOS) signal generator detector.
  • Automation software. C++ object oriented design. Mutli-threaded under DOS.
  
  
• Firmware design/implementation for NEC V25 coprocessors. Multiple projects.
• Object Oriented designs implemented in C++.
• Device drivers/ISRs written in assembly language.
• Master/Control system firmware (M68K, MPC860 and Pentium) C++/OOD/UML using VxWorks.

Duties included hard real-time firmware/hardware integration (M68HC05), MS DOS TSRs, device drivers, bootstrap programs, utilities, encryption algorithms.

Hardware/firmware designer of embedded controllers SCSI device drivers and software utilities (MS-DOS, Macintosh, NetWare and Unix). Engineering level support to customers, manufacturing and other team members. Black box testing of new products.

software/firmware design of automated assembly-line equipment consisting of custom controllers and PC software written in Modula-II. On site engineering level support for entire assembly process, including many PLCs (GE Fanuc and Allen-Bradley). Data gathering/archival by networked PCs running QNX.

Digital hardware design of 6809/z80 based data acquisition systems. Supervised firmware design of the same. Engineering level customer support.

Teaching introductory programming courses (Visual Basic).

Created curriculum and taught real-time/embedded systems courses.