Motorola UDS, Huntsville, Alabama

Typical Responsibilities -

• Research of data communications technogies.
• Guest lecturing at universities and IEEE chapter meetings.
• Internal course design and presentation.
• Wireline and wireless TX/RX signal procesisng simulation.
• DSP code development for wired and wireless products.
• Voiceband modems over AMPS.
• Event-driven simulation language author.
• CSMA network simulation.
• Chaired PCCA standards body, and participated in other standards bodies.

Skills Attained -

• Company representation and participation in standards bodies.

General Observations -

• UDS was a great place to work. It was the place where Jerry observed the most pronounced culture of the engineering team seeing themselves as a 'family' - a close knit group of individuals who considered themselves to be part of something very special. There was even a sense of 'pity' for those commoners unfortunate enough to not be part of that group.
• The engineers followed Mark Smith from UDS onto Adtran in a never-ending trickle. The engineering force went from a max of 110 engineers to only 5 in about 3 years. Without the engineers and an identifiable guiding light such as Mark Smith was, it was impossible for the company to survive. We all considered the end of that team, that culture, as being quite a loss.

Notable Accomplishments -

• Jerry achieved successful completion of what he considers to be one of his career 'crowning' achievements at UDS. This was a technology he developed and patented for overcoming a major obstacle in getting modems to successfully operate over analog cellular communications systems. This resulted in one of his patents.
• This technology resulted in the win of a contract with United Parcel Services. UPS wished to use the cellular system to transmit back to their network center the data pertaining to each package delivery. They wished to do this over the cellular system, but it was too unreliable. With this technology, UDS won an order of 60,000 combined modem and cellular phone units. One of these units was installed in each UPS delivery vehicle in America.
• Jerry received two patents while at Motorola UDS.
• Jerry authored an event driven simulation language called EDSL, standing for, of all things, Event Driven Simulation Language. Jerry used EDSL to simulate a contentious wireless Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) system, explaining some of the anomalies being observed at sites installed with these wireless systems.