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.