Education
M.A.Sc – Dalhousie University
I am currently a graduate student studying a masters in Electrical Engineering at Dalhousie University. My research concentrates on the field of Underwater Communications – investigating the interaction of acoustics and high radio frequency signals with the air-sea interface.
B.A.Sc – Liberty University
I graduated from Liberty University (Go Flames!) in Lynchburg, Virginia in May of 2022, with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. I was passionate about marine life and had a desire to protect our oceans, but was gravitated towards Mathematics and Physics. I decided to utilize this passion for these subjects by first pursuing electrical engineering to create the tools that equip scientists to make meaningful change in our oceans.
Projects and Papers
Below you can find some of the projects I have been involved in and papers recently published.
I have collected and documented some of my favourite designs both at school and at home – enjoy!
Magnetic Inductive Link
A unique method to communicate information across the air-sea interface is through a process known as magnetic induction. This approach enables collection of information bellow the surface of the water for wireless transmission at the surface using a magnetic link.
This is our receiver. It relies on a principle known as near-field coupling to receive information wirelessly from our transmitter.
The receiver is a single array with three elements, indicated by the three-coils on each axis.
Alignment is key when establishing a communication link and it is something I am in the process of researching to improve the overall throughput.
As the transmitter is submerged, it needs to be water-proof. Using a 3D printed enclosure with the help of Solidworks and using epoxy resin for transparency; I was able to ensure a complete seal around the AWG-24 coil and connection to the signal generator to transmit a sine-wave while also monitoring coil orientation.
Acoustic Transceiver Testbed
The experiment was to support the development of a bi-directional communication link utilizing a 27.5kHz acoustic transmitter with 5kHz bandwidth along with an embedded system-on-chip FPGA board.
This is our acoustic testbed setup. The purpose of this setup is to adaptively control parameters at the transceiver and monitor channel state information utilizing a cross-correlation algorithm.
This sea-trial was conducted to validate the Transmit Voltage Response (TVR) curve for our single-ended transmitter as provided by the manufacturer. It was a validation test to ensure proper communication between our host computer, Digilent Zybo evaluation board and FPGA, to achieve a maximum sound pressure intensity occurring at 27.5kHz.
Oceans Conference 2024 – Ocean Technology Presentation
This sea-trial and test setup was published in a paper in the OCEANS 2024 conference in Nova Scotia, Halifax.
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I had the opportunity to participate in this year’s OCEANS conference as a co-organizer and company liason. I and also witnessed the presentation of our paper for the adaptive acoustic transceiver SoC Testbed which we conducted a sea-trial for in early May.