ADS Environmental Services, Huntsville, Alabama
Typical Responsibilities -
- Fluid flow monitoring equipment system specification/design.
- DSP code for spectral analysis of ultrasonic signals.
- Ultrasonic piezoceramic sensor design.
- PCB layout/design.
- FPGA design.
- Analog signal processing circuitry.
- Pressure and temperature sensor interface circuitry.
- Battery system design and high-efficiency power management.
Skills Attained -
- System specification creation and document authoring.
- Piezo-ceramic sensor design.
- Ultrasonic time-domain reflectrometry system design.
- Temperature & pressure signal conditioning circuitry and digital linearization.
- Impedance matching with magnetics.
- FPGA selection and design.
- OrCAD
- Altera Max+PLUS II
General Observations -
- ADS gave Jerry many opportunities to work not only in electrical design, but mechanical design as well.
- A sewer is a tough place to live - even for a water-tight computer.
Notable Accomplishments -
- Jerry authored his first complete system specification document there.
- Jerry took a pressure sensor which was accurate to about 0.5 PSI, and through linearization and compensation techniques, was able to increase the accuracy of the readings to within 0.01 PSI.
- The new system was found to consume a complete set of batteries in about three weeks. Jerry and team came up with several ways to reduce system energy consumption. And Jerry designed a battery pack which stored several times the power in the same physical space. The result was a system that was able to survive a year on a single battery pack, eliminating the need for several truck rolls a year, each costing about $500 per system, per trip.