CURRICULUM VITAE
Name	Christopher Alan Brown	Location	Kingsclere, Hampshire 
Date of Birth	6th June 1960	Nationality	British
	
Qualifications	First class honours Bachelor of Engineering degree from Sheffield University, 1978‑1981.
Occupation	Real-time embedded software design engineer with digital / analogue hardware expertise.
EXPERIENCE SUMMARY
Software:
•	Layered, structured, real-time, multi-tasking embedded software design.
•	A deep understanding of target hardware.
•	Languages: C, Pascal, various assemblers. 
•	Processors: 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit.
•	Operating systems: C Executive, pSOS, VxWorks, various schedulers and proprietary operating systems. 
•	Design tools: Many cross-compilers and debuggers. 
•	Source code control: TortoiseSVN, Fortress, Visual Sourcesafe,.
•	Protocols: CAN bus, serial, TCP/IP, FTP, SNMP, SNTP, Telnet.
•	Software design for electronic products employing a wide range of high performance and low-end embedded micro-controllers, digital signal processors, discrete logic and analogue circuitry. 

Hardware:
•	An appreciation of the factors involved with volume manufacturing, such as cost, testability and manufacturability. 
•	Knowledge of the EMC Directive, the Low Voltage Directive, product safety and the CE marking process for electronic products. 
•	An understanding of the trade-offs between technical and marketing requirements. 
•	Experience with communications systems: location systems, radio data networks, cellular phones. 
•	Battery powered equipment design. 
•	Multiple processor systems. 
•	Industrial/vehicle electronics including CAN bus.
•	Low frequency analogue design.
•	Ethernet, RS232, RS485, Modbus, CAN.

Industries
•	Oilfield
•	Consumer
•	Industrial
•	Marine
•	Telecommunications

Other Skills:
•	Good written English.
•	Good interaction with other staff.
Due to pressures of space, this CV necessarily contains only brief details. For further information, together with up-to-date availability of this consultant, please visit the company’s web site: www.sharpedge.org.

CAREER HISTORY
SHARPEDGE ENGINEERING LTD., Kingslere, Hampshire – January 2001 to present
Sharpedge Engineering Limited provides technical consultancy in the real-time embedded arena. The company has delivered embedded software and hardware solutions to a diverse range of clients.

Recent Clients (early 2004 to present)
(1)
For the past four years, a company has outsourced the software development of a number of products to me. The company operates in the radio consultancy sector and is involved in the design of a number of disparate products.
I provided software for an entire range of products, collectively known as Loc8tor. This successful consumer location product uses a handheld device to locate miniature tags, using RF direction finding technology. The tags are typically attached to items that might go missing (e.g. keys, wallet, model aircraft). 
The product range operates in the 2.45GHz band, using Zigbee/IEEE 802.15.4 as the RF transport, with a custom synchronisation word to avoid interference from other networks. A number of different RF transceiver devices were used.
The tags are designed to spend most of their life in a low power sleep state, waking periodically to determine whether they are being addressed by their parent handheld. When the tag is being located, it transmits periodic messages that are received by the handheld. 
A Yagi antenna in the handheld provides directionality and the audio-visual user interface guides the user to the tag. 
The tag and handheld devices in the product range are engineered for the lowest possible production cost, requiring extensive software functionality to drive the radio and utilise the on-chip processor resources. Great attention was paid to the power consumption, resulting in a world beating battery life figure.
I also provided the hardware design for an emergency lighting system for use on commercial passenger aircraft. Previous attempts to gain certification using a software solution failed. I was engaged to design the functionality of the working product into discrete logic, retaining the processor for self-test only. The product is now in service in a number of aircraft.

(2)
For the past several years, a local technology company has outsourced its embedded software requirements to me. The company operates in the industrial, marine and oilfield industries, providing bespoke solutions for a wide variety of clients. 
I have provided software for a wide range of products for this client. In addition to providing control functionality, safety is also a major concern as many of the products operate at power levels in excess of 100kW and voltages up to 3000V.
The products for which I have provided software include:
•	equipment for an oil industry down-hole formation testing tool, including both surface and down-hole elements. The work involved NIOS soft-cored processors, Ethernet and TCP/IP communications, communications between surface and down-hole components via high speed modems, DC motor control, data acquisition and waveform analysis.
•	a range of machines to generate large amounts of electrical power from waste heat.
•	a number of submersible vehicles, employing thruster control and surface communications. Software was developed to control the on-board power supplies and manage the internal CAN bus communications network. The distributed software allowed thrusters and other equipment on board the vehicle to be controlled from a surface ship and also allowed private communication between the various on-board controllers.
•	a large industrial motor drive. This used a similar architecture to the submersible vehicle projects, but controlled drive electronics operating at power levels an order of magnitude higher. Reliable communications between subsystems connected by fibre optics was designed, together with extensive control, safety, test, maintenance and diagnostic software
All of the recent product hardware is based upon the Altera Cyclone FPGA, embodying one or more NIOS embedded processors. Most products employ high voltage, high power supplies. All require data acquisition, system monitoring and control. Many also require mathematical analysis of data and transport of data via various communications protocols.

Earlier Experience (pre-2004)
(3)
Embedded software for automatic number plate recognition products was developed. The products read the number plates of passing vehicles and transferred the information to a central point for processing by the end user application. Typical applications included monitoring traffic flow in road networks, speed enforcement, automatic toll charging, restricted lane violation detection and car park management.
Both new functionality and the resolution of bugs in existing software was involved. The Coldfire-based system employed the C Executive real-time operating system, with network communication via TCP/IP over Ethernet and PPP over a GPRS modem.
Many problems were found in the main application code, the commercial operating system, and in the FTP, Telnet, TCP/IP and PPP networking code. 
(4)
Embedded software for a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) product was developed. The product comprised a number of distributed processors (Hitachi H8S series), communicating via a CAN bus. The electronics controlled a high speed gas turbine engine, which drove an 80kW electrical generator. The exhaust gas provided a source of heat for a boiler.
The areas of responsibility included designing the overall software architecture, detailed design and coding of the lower level service layers for all of the boards in the system and the design and coding of application layer software for three of the controller boards. The implemented software operated in conjunction with a third party start inverter and the high voltage power electronics side of the product, which were both controlled via the CAN bus.
The low level software designed provided display management, serial protocols, real-time clock services, non-volatile storage management, event logging and I/O services. All services were designed to ensure the application layer required no knowledge of the underlying hardware or the lower level processes.
 (5)
A number of feature enhancements and bug fixes were designed for a variety of ISDN protocol conversion products. 
A product enhancement that had been abandoned was resurrected. This involved the addition of an Ethernet interface to a serially managed product, together with significant changes to the controlling software. The target was a C / Pascal hybrid, running under VxWorks, replacing an entirely Pascal original running under pSOS. Severe software problems defeated the in-house team. However, a detailed examination of the entire product and a complete understanding of the system software led to solutions to all of the outstanding problems being found and the product being released.
Software was written to make a number of feature enhancements to an existing product that provides conversion between the protocol messaging and information elements of Q.931 ISDN and SS7 ISUP. With these changes, the network operator was able to enable or disable the new features as required for different markets, thereby prolonging the life of an already successful product.