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| From: | Z C |
| Subject: | GSoC Introduction - DPD Project |
| Date: | Tue, 24 Mar 2020 00:12:50 +0000 |
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Hi everyone,
I thought I'd introduce myself/my background discuss some aspects of the project I'd like to apply for with interested contributers before submitting a draft proposal. Apologies if it's a bit of an essay!
I'm a PhD student in Engineering at Cardiff University investigating linear and non-linear modelling techniques for RF/microwave power amplifiers, having also completed both the Wireless & Microwave Communication Engineering MSc and my electronics BEng
at Cardiff. Outside of academia I've been "officially" involved in Amateur Radio for over 1 1/2 years now, although you could argue it's been longer just not under that banner. I'm now fully licensed in the UK and am heavliy involved in the university Amateur
Radio society, which is what lead me to GNU Radio.
Of all of the GSoC ideas proposed so far, the DPD project is the natural choice for me as it's closely related to my interests and research subject in general, so that is the one I'd like to apply for. The current situation means I can't do any experiments
at university, so I'd like to try and make use of my time the best I can and take on something challenging that will improve my wider skillset. I've mainly used GNU Radio with an RTL-SDR and (increasingly) with an ADALM PLUTO in an Amateur Radio context for
demonstrations ect, but haven't contributed to the project in a meaningful way (yet...); this is a great way to start! I've incorporated basic version control (Git) into my workflow and am becoming more familiar with Linux (Ubuntu) by the day and this is a
great excuse to engross myself in it further.
For my coding background, here's a link to my GitHub: https://github.com/ZCostello - I've put up a few small C++ sample codes that I wrote for some programming challenges, such as a basic RSA decryption tool, and I'll be uploading more to it in the next
few days.
I've used Matlab quite extensively during my PhD but I'm not sure I'm able to put up most of that code on my GitHub until my paper that uses it is finished, submitted and (hopefully!) approved. I have, however, put up what I can, such as a script I wrote
that parses MDIF files (crucially for both measurements and simulations which have varying parameters) and sorts them into a Matlab non-scalar structure. Apart from being essential for my work, this has also been of use for some of the other researchers in
my group (especially with some minor modifications). Of more relevant langauges, I've mainly used Python, C++ and Embedded C. For example, for a summer placement at Merseburg University of Applied Sciences in 2015 I worked on designing a smart meter for testing
purposes using a low-cost ARM Cortex MCU. The project involved porting (and finishing) previous work to the relevant platform and adapting it to use an RTOS.
The DPD project on your wiki lists 3 main objectives, which I've done a bit of research into so far. As power amplifier non-linearities and behavioural models are basically my PhD topic (and main headache cause...), I'd like to think I've got a solid grounding
in the underlying RF/microwave theory required for the project and have a reasonable grasp of the literature, so I am confident that I'd have the "research phase" done well before the starting date. Regardless of whether my proposal is successful or not, I'd
recommend the following starting points for this idea to people interested:
One objective I'd definitely like to add is producing clear wiki documentation (or in another format if that would be better) and grc files for each aspect as I think it would massively enhance the project outcome and increase its development prospects
going forward.
This is getting a bit long now, so if you've got any feedback so far I'd be interested in hearing it.
Thanks,
Zack Costello
address@hidden |
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