Education
M.A.Sc – Dalhousie University
I am currently a graduate student studying a masters in Electrical Engineering at Dalhousie University (Go Rams!). My research concentrates on Underwater Communications – investigating the interaction of acoustics and UHF radar to form a communication link between the water-air-ice boundary layer to collect essential ocean variables.
One of the projects I enjoyed the most during my masters was a comunication system that integrates a magnetic inductive link relying on near-field coupling between a receiver and transmitter coil. The image on the left was during the molding process of the transmitter coil – wound 70 times using AWG-20 Copper to form a conductive loop. This would serve to improve our wireless link from one to ten meters!
B.A.Sc – Liberty University
I graduated from Liberty University (Go Flames!) in Lynchburg, Virginia in May of 2022, with a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering. I am passionate about marine life and had a desire to protect our oceans, but gravitated towards Mathematics and Physics. I decided to utilize this passion by first pursuing electrical engineering to create the tools that will serve to 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. By connnecting the FPGA to our PC, we enable the SPI link to communicate directly with our Zybo processor on top of our FPGA board. The information we are sending to the FPGA includes the amplitude of applied voltage of the signal. When post-processing this information, we can see how changes in voltage amplitude impact the efficiency of our transmitter, and understand what frequency the transmitter operates at most efficiently using a transmit voltage response curve.
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 validate the manufacture’s rated sound pressure level at 152dB µPa/V @1m with a carrier frequency of 27.5kHz.
2024 – Ocean Technology Presentation
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.
Our acoustic testbed sea-trial was published in this yea’rs OCEANS 2024 conference in Nova Scotia, Halifax.