I’ve been working as a Signal engineer within the R&D department for Qowisio since March 2016.
Tell us about your role
My main activity consists in developing part of the embedded software for the gateways of the Qowisio UNB network. A gateway is a device that connects the UNB network to the internet: it receives the messages emitted by the connected devices, it analyzes them, and it sends their content to the Qowisio servers. My contribution is based on digital signal processing techniques to detect UNB messages and extract the information they contain.
In 2016, my main concern was to improve the software of existing gateways to optimize their performance. Over the last few months, I have also been involved in the development of new gateway models.
What are your main challenges?
Ideally, a gateway should be able to receive all messages from all objets located in a nominal range around the antenna. In reality, various factors can interfere with the communication: electromagnetic noise, obstacles between the object and the antenna, etc. Most often, we can not directly act upon the sources of these perturbations. However, we can use emission and reception techniques that will make UNB messages easier to detect, even if they suffer from strong attenuation or are hidden in noise.
Your motto? your passion?
Before joining Qowisio, my activities as an associate professor allowed me to explore various domains, from digital electronics to web development via embedded systems. Even if my current work is more specialized and applied, I take care to keep up this multidisciplinary direction.