Who does your RF?

About RFdude.com LLC & contact information

Lance Lascari

consultant in the areas of

RF & Microwave Circuits/Systems

Wireless Communications Systems

A short list of our specialties:

• Critical design review preparation and participation.
• Feasibility studies.
• "Fast and thorough" HF through microwave circuit design & analysis, primarily geared towards modern wireless communications systems, some instrumentation experience.
• Low noise Oscillator and synthesizer design
• From detailed circuit design through system architecture
• Proof-of-concept design and rapid prototyping
• Troubleshooting system level problems (spur sources, stability problems, RFI/EMC, etc.)
• PC (Windows primarily)/embedded software (PIC/HC11/8051/DSP) for interfacing to RF hardware (not as a primary focus, mainly to allow more complete prototypes)
• Advice on regulatory and localization issues with wireless devices

The majority of our experience has been in medium+ volume production where "design for manufacturing", "design for test"  and overall solution cost have been very important.  Please see Lance's resume page for more details.  To see some of the free tools we've created over the years, please follow this link.

Here are some example tasks that we can provide for your organization efficiently:

• Short term projects ("days")
  • Participate as an external reviewer for Engineering Design Reviews (both remotely and on-site).
  • RF and high speed digital board design reviews for specific problems (not a focus here, but we have some tools that can do the analysis).
  • Synthesizer design to specifications based on off-the-shelf components, with detailed design report showing research and simulation.  Some support during the evaluation/implementation phase would also be provided.
  • amplifier, mixer, filter (lumped, distributed) design and prototyping.
  • basic antenna designs & prototypes
  • Synthesizer / VCO design help/troubleshooting.
  • Reverse engineering
  • Developing a customized analysis solution (MathCad, Octave, Excel, Genesys, Sonnet, etc).
  • Component & System research
  • Competitive research
  • Individual circuit design (LNA, PA, filter, mixer, VCO, synthesizer, multiplier, coupler.....).
  • helping the client to find the right consultant if I'm not the one!
  • Search of references for a given problem/circuit/methodology
  • Review a proposed design and look for weaknesses with respect to regulatory or specification  requirements.
  • Rough measurements/modeling/debugging of EMC problems (radiated emissions, susceptibility, unintentional conducted emissions).
  • Quick RF site surveys/interference studies for wireless deployments.
• Longer term projects ("weeks")
  • Working to generate RF hardware specifications from marketing requirements
  • Helping clients to understand what specifications are important so that the design is well balanced from an RF perspective.
  • Helping clients to design for manufacturability, test.  Also helping to develop engineering level evaluation plans for RF subsystems.
  • System & circuit design.
  • Developing a custom software application for test/characterization automation.
• Recurring Services
  • Availability for on-site design reviews or critique of electronic-form documentation such as schematics, layouts, block-diagrams.
  • long term research in the interest of the client
  • Providing limited training or technical briefing in an area where we are qualified.
  •  "mentoring"  individuals in a given area where we have significant experience.  This is especially valuable for small engineering teams where it can be very difficult if there aren't other RF/Microwave engineers  to bounce ideas off of.
  • Applications engineering assistance (test circuits, creating simulation models, etc.).

RFdude.com Resources

Software:

• Agilent/Eagleware Genesys (powerful Linear, Nonlinear, Transient, Spectral-System, Planar EM analysis, Layout)  See the LAB page to see some examples of Genesys simulations compared with data we pulled from our equipment!
• Sonnet Lite Plus version 10 (planar EM) 
• Our smith chart program (Of course!)
• MS office, etc.
• MathCAD 14
• Microsoft Visual C++ professional /  MS ".Net" professional suite (VC++, VB, etc.)
• GNU Octave (Matlab like environment, free)
• Client supplied tools-- you name it and we can probably figure it out.
•  I have experience with Ansoft HFSS and Ansoft Designer.
• Embedded development tools (c-compilers, assemblers, programmers) for a variety of processors such as the microchip PIC family, Motorola HC11/hc05/hc12, etc.  We've even designed our own in-circuit programming software/hardware for Microchip PIC (12f, 16f, 18f) and Motorola HC11 platforms.
• Orcad Schematic Capture (v16)
• Cadsoft Eagle Schematic/Layout/Autorouter
• Intellicad based 2-d/3-d drafting software.
• DeskCNC and PhCNC to run our milling machine (New 2007!)

Hardware capabilities: 

• Fully equipped hardware lab with rapid RF/microwave prototyping capability.

Please follow this link to our LAB page to see more

About / Contact

© 2008 RFdude.com LLC

 free software tools                               LAB                                                  resume