5668 Roane Drive, Oceanside, California 92057

FRANK R. NICHOLS, SR.

frank@frankrnichols.com

SUMMARY: Principal Engineer with extensive experience in product development, electrical hardware & embedded firmware engineering.

· Re-designed embedded firmware and hardware for military radios used around the world.

· Principal designer of telecom test equipment; designing both hardware and firmware for multiple products used by AT&T, TelMex, SBC Global and Bell South.

· Sole inventor for a unique Doppler Radar design that not only measures speed, but also the distance to the target. Used by Toyota, Kentucky and Baxter Medical, Los Angeles.

· Principal designer of a DSL Modem.

· Patents pending for embedded security device.

PROFICIENCIES:

Windows 2000, Windows XP, MS-DOS, Type 88-WPM, Unix, Linux, Cocoa, Mac OS-X, ANSI C, ASM, C++, Visual Basic, Excel, Word, MS Project, SolidWorks, ProTel, ORCAD, PADS, PSPICE, Altium, Zigbee, HomePlug (HPNA), ISM radio, mesh networks, aDSL, TCP/IP, DDS (Direct Digital Synthesis), ADC, DAC.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Principal Engineer .

Datron World Communications, Inc., Vista, CA June 2005 to May 2010.

· ‘Key’ Sustaining engineer, supporting all products (VHF and HF military radios).

· Re-designed embedded firmware.

- Coldfire, MC68000, MC68HC711, Z8038018, Xilinx FPGAs.

- Proprietary RTOS, interrupt-driven work loops, and embedded MS-DOS.

- Object-oriented, ANSI C, and ASM.

· Re-designed existing hardware.

- RF phase detectors, 20W RF amplifier, 5W VHF amplifier, 125W antenna coupler.

· Designed new hardware and wrote firmware.

- Rolling-code encryption, remote-control keypad and display, data-logging modules.

- Silabs C8051F911 and C8051F121, Microchip PIC16F887 and PIC12F635.

· Taught and mentored junior staff.

· Wrote course materials teaching theory of broadband impedance matching devices.

· Identified ‘bugs’ in COTS supplier's design, causing vendor re-design (improper bias of MOSFET gate causing failure over temperature).

Principal Engineer.

General Safety Corporation, Oceanside, CA August 2002 to June 2005.

· Original modulated Doppler Radar design which output distance as well as velocity.

· Complete product definition, design, development, test, manufacture, marketing and sales of K-band doppler radar products for traffic safety and sports applications.

· Analog Devices' Blackfin - ADSP-BF533 for radar signals processing.

· Microchip - PIC 16F873 for system controller.

- all firmware in ANSI C.

· Used SolidWorks for all cabinet and front panel design work.

Principal Engineer.

Excelsus Technologies, Division of Pulse Magnetics, Carlsbad, CA October 2000 to August 2002.

• Designed new magnetics for primary product, (co-workers dubbed it 'the Nichols inductor'), to increase manufacturability. Yields went from 65% to 97%.
• Designed, developed and supported HPNA-ADSL Residential Gateway product, all DSL filter products, and custom test equipment and test strategies for all products at start-up company.

- Designed low-cost frequency-agile test fixture, suitable for export to our factory in China.

• PIC16F877, AD9851 direct digital synthesizer - firmware ANSI C.
• HP 4-port network analyzers, TELCO line simulators, PSPICE, SolidWorks.
• Key contributor in establishing the engineering quality implementation, engineering processes & procedures, and data configuration management & control, and ISO 9001 compliance where previously none existed.
• Implemented a new standardized Bill of Materials and Bill of Operations documentation system and APL system revision control, where previously none existed.
• Promoted to Electrical Design Manager.
• Established budget and schedule, hired and directly managed engineering personnel, developed procedures and design standards and methodology for documentation. All engineering development and test staff were direct reports to me.
• Responsible for all aspects of Pulse Magnetics' due diligence compliance testing when Excelsus was bought by Pulse Magnetics.

Principal Engineer.

Tempo Research Corporation, Vista, CA May 1994 to October 2000.

· Created new product designs. All hardware and firmware design for:

- ATU-R ADSL laptop modem plug-in module (Alcatel chipset).

- Handheld end-to-end automated transmission test set for phone lines.

- TDR (Time Domain Reflectometer).

- Reverse TDR (using reverse-fourier transform to derive TDR information from frequency domain measurements).

- Automated 'technician' - voice-synthesized test system allowing one technician to perform tests previously requiring two technicians.

- 'The ID'r' - Caller I.D. Test Set.

· Conceived, designed and set up the test and production line for hand-held Caller ID field test sets.

EDUCATION:

• Navy Electronics School - Graduated with Honors, United States Navy.
• L.A. Pierce College, Computer Science/Physics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• Nichols, Frank R., Principles of Caller I.D., Self-published, 1994. Copies available upon request.
• Nichols, Frank R., Transmission Line Transformers: a Primer, for Datron World Communications, Inc., Vista, CA, 2008. Copies available upon request.

Keywords:

Thermocouples, MF/DTMF, 1/f noise limit, ferrite magnetics, Doppler Radar, Power management, Thermal management, RTOS, Interrupt-driven, real time, embedded, object oriented, kernel debugging, device drivers, I2C, SPI, serial async, serial sync, UART, GPIB, DSP, CODEC, Power PC, HP network analyzers, Tektronix 4GHz oscilloscopes, Agilent programmable waveform generators, spectrum analyzers, netlisting, layout, and Gerber file generation.