We usually have a couple of students join us for the summer. This year Phoebe worked in the software and firmware team, and Jamie in the hardware team. Here are their summaries of their time with us.
Phoebe Sayer
I have very much enjoyed my internship at CellXica and learned a lot from the experience. I had no experience of signal processing before, but people were very willing to explain and help me learn about it. The company is a welcoming environment, and I found the project I worked on very interesting.
Over the course of my summer internship I developed a TDOA system that can locate a radio transmitter. In the process, I learned MATLAB along with some C++, neither of which were languages I had experience with before. Having the opportunity to apply what I was learning to a real project made this much more interesting and enjoyable.
Jamie Keeling
I was with cellXica for 12 weeks as a summer intern, undertaking a hardware development project.
During my short time at cellXica, I have designed a custom piece of hardware from (near!)-scratch, designed a 4-layer PCB featuring microcontrollers, DACs and power supplies, as well as some specialised RF hardware. I have developed software for my hardware to interact with the SC5 & SC6 platforms and developed firmware for the embedded microcontroller. I have been able to test my hardware and software combination in order to produce a fully functional prototype by the end of my time here.
As you can see my short project has covered a wide range of electronics disciplines, from the basic circuit design to the PCB layout, through to the manufacturing process and firmware development side. This variety of disciplines has been facilitated by the nature of cellXica’s engineering interests and has been enormously helpful for my understanding of both radio communications technology and the electronic design and development process in general.
Whilst working here cellXica has always provided support when it has been needed but also facilitates building an understanding of the engineering fundamentals by allowing you to explore ideas on your own. The engineers are skilled and friendly, always taking time to bring me up to speed with the expansive field of modern communications technology.