Technical skills
Technical Skills
RF and microwave first, then the supporting stack
Sections
- RF / Microwave
- Simulation, measurement and circuit design
- Antennas / Satcom
- Arrays, beam steering, Ku band, links
- RF Computing / ML
- Numerical and learned methods on RF data
- Embedded / Wireless
- Microcontrollers, buses, radio links
- Electronics
- Boards, instruments, bring-up
- Languages
- French, English, German
01
RF / Microwave
The core of the profile: designing a passive or active microwave structure, simulating it, and then measuring it on an instrument to find out where the model was wrong.
| Tool / topic | What it is used for | Shown in |
|---|---|---|
| Keysight ADS | Circuit and chain design: S-parameter, noise, harmonic balance and budget analysis on an RF chain. | RF chain, Ku-band payload |
| Ansys HFSS | Full-wave electromagnetic simulation of antennas and microwave structures, with coupling retained rather than idealised away. | LAPLACE / Anywaves, AetherArray |
| Q2D Extractor | Quasi-static extraction of line parameters from a microstrip or CPW cross-section, before any full-wave solve is worth running. | LAPLACE / Anywaves |
| LineCalc | Dimensioning transmission lines from substrate and target impedance, the first calculation on any board. | LAPLACE / Anywaves |
| openEMS | Open-source full-wave simulation, used as an independent check on a commercial solver result. | LAPLACE / Anywaves |
| Meep | Finite-difference time-domain electromagnetic solver. Used on anisotropic and lossy media, and contributed to upstream: a conductivity tensor the solver silently truncated is now rejected. | Open source |
| PyAEDT | Driving the solver from Python: parameter sweeps and post-processing that are reproducible rather than clicked. | LAPLACE / Anywaves, AetherArray |
| VNA | Vector network analyser measurement: calibration, reference planes, and knowing what the instrument is actually reporting. | LAPLACE / Anywaves |
| S-parameters | The common language between simulation and measurement, and the thing the two are compared in. | LAPLACE / Anywaves, AetherArray |
| Matching | 50 ohm matching, the Smith chart, and matching networks at every interface in a chain. | RF chain, LAPLACE / Anywaves |
| Stability | Stability factors across the band, not only at the design point, because an oscillating amplifier has no specification. | RF chain |
| Noise | Noise figure, the Friis cascade, and which stage actually sets the noise of a chain. | RF chain, Ku-band payload |
| Nonlinear RF | Compression, IIP3, intermodulation, harmonic balance, and the back-off trade in a power stage. | RF chain, Ku-band payload |
02
Antennas / Satcom
Radiating structures and the links built from them, from a single patch to a steered array and a Ku-band payload.
| Tool / topic | What it is used for | Shown in |
|---|---|---|
| Antenna arrays | Array factor, element spacing, weighting, and what four elements can and cannot shape. | AetherArray |
| Beam steering | Phase control across channels, switched-line phase shifters, and the quantisation the bit count imposes. | AetherArray |
| Calibration | The array as y = Hx: measuring the coupling matrix, inverting it under regularisation, and counting the physical measurements it costs. | AetherArray |
| Mutual coupling | Coupling between neighbouring elements treated as an input to calibration, and possibly as the measurement itself. | AetherArray |
| Microstrip | Planar transmission line: effective permittivity, dimensioning, discontinuities and radiation from them. | LAPLACE / Anywaves, Teaching |
| CPW | Coplanar waveguide, its ground-plane behaviour and its use where a via to ground is expensive. | LAPLACE / Anywaves |
| Near-field | Near-field characterisation and the field maps it produces, and the far-field distance criterion that says when it is needed. | LAPLACE / Anywaves, AetherArray |
| Ku band | A 17.3 to 18.1 GHz uplink converted towards 12.1 GHz, and what changes at those frequencies. | Ku-band payload |
| TWTA | Travelling-wave tube amplifier: saturation, AM/AM and AM/PM behaviour, and input and output back-off. | Ku-band payload |
| QPSK | The modulation the payload carries, and how amplifier nonlinearity shows up in its constellation and its error rate. | Ku-band payload |
03
RF Computing / ML
The numerical side of RF work: processing what the instrument produced, and estimating what it did not measure directly.
| Tool / topic | What it is used for | Shown in |
|---|---|---|
| Python | The working language for solver automation, measurement post-processing and analysis. | LAPLACE / Anywaves, AetherArray, Open source |
| scikit-rf | RF network analysis: reading and manipulating S-parameters, de-embedding, time gating. Also a project contributed to upstream. | Open source, AetherArray |
| NumPy / SciPy | The numerical base: linear algebra, signal processing and optimisation underneath everything above. | AetherArray, Open source |
| MATLAB | Analysis and modelling, including the control and simulation side of the avionics work. | ANVIL / LOOPY |
| Jupyter | Where analysis is done and shown, with restart-and-run-all as the standard rather than an aspiration. | AI for Impact |
| scikit-learn | Pipelines that fit preprocessing inside the cross-validation fold, which is the mechanism that prevents leakage. | AI for Impact |
| Optuna | Hyperparameter search as a recorded study, so the search space and the trials are part of the artefact. | AI for Impact |
| MLflow | Recording runs with their parameters, metrics and artefacts, so a claimed number is attached to the configuration that produced it. | AI for Impact |
| Inverse problems | Regularised inversion, conditioning, and estimation under a measurement budget, which is what array calibration is. | AetherArray, IP Paris |
| Generative and scientific ML | Diffusion models, flow matching and constrained learning, taken for the surrogate and prior side of inverse design. | IP Paris |
04
Embedded / Wireless
Microcontrollers, the buses around them, and the radio links they feed. This is the half of the work that has to run unattended on a vehicle.
| Tool / topic | What it is used for | Shown in |
|---|---|---|
| STM32 | Acquisition and communication firmware: peripherals, DMA, timing and bring-up on a new part. | N7 Racing, SOGECLAIR |
| C / C++ | The language of every embedded target here, including the flight firmware and the migrated product. | SOGECLAIR, ANVIL / LOOPY, Open source |
| CAN / CAN-FD | The vehicle bus: frame layout, identifier priority, bus load, and the DBC as the single source of truth. | N7 Racing |
| ADC | Conversion on the microcontroller: sampling rate set by the signal, acquisition time set by the source impedance. | N7 Racing |
| UART | Serial links, including RS232 with DMA and a protocol state machine above them. | SOGECLAIR, N7 Racing |
| SPI | Peripheral and radio-module interfacing. | N7 Racing, ANVIL / LOOPY |
| I2C | Sensor interfacing on the acquisition side. | N7 Racing, ANVIL / LOOPY |
| Ethernet | MAC over RMII to an external PHY, with LwIP above it, added to a product that had only serial links. | SOGECLAIR |
| LoRa | Car to pit telemetry: spreading factor and bandwidth traded against update rate, and an antenna integrated onto a vehicle rather than onto a bench. | N7 Racing |
| Real-time firmware | Flight firmware on an RP2040 under a real-time kernel, and the pin map reconciled against the schematic. | ANVIL / LOOPY |
05
Electronics
Boards, and the instruments used to find out what a board actually does as opposed to what its schematic says.
| Tool / topic | What it is used for | Shown in |
|---|---|---|
| KiCad | Schematic capture and PCB layout, with the electrical rule check treated as a gate. | ANVIL / LOOPY, AetherArray, LAPLACE / Anywaves |
| PCB design | Layout with the constraints that analogue, power and RF sections impose: return paths, plane splits and separation between switching and sensing. | ANVIL / LOOPY, AetherArray |
| Analogue electronics | Conditioning, filtering, amplification and references, between a sensor and a converter. | N7 Racing, ANVIL / LOOPY |
| Digital electronics | Logic, interfaces and the digital side of a mixed-signal board. | ANVIL / LOOPY, ENSEEIHT |
| Sensors | Inertial, thermal, position and speed sensing, and what each one needs before it is believable. | N7 Racing, ANVIL / LOOPY |
| Oscilloscope | Time-domain measurement: what a signal is really doing when the firmware says it is fine. | N7 Racing, ANVIL / LOOPY |
| Hardware bring-up | Powering a new revision in a defined order, rails before loads, and finding out what the schematic actually built. | ANVIL / LOOPY |
| Validation | Checking a board against what it is supposed to do before it is trusted, and recording what was not checked. | ANVIL / LOOPY, N7 Racing |
| Component selection | Parts chosen against their datasheets and their operating point, not against their bench behaviour at nominal voltage. | ANVIL / LOOPY |
| Electromagnetic compatibility | Switching motor drives a few centimetres from sensing and radio sections, treated as a layout and filtering problem. | ANVIL / LOOPY |
06
Languages
Working languages.
| Language | Level | Use |
|---|---|---|
| French | Native | First language. All coursework, teaching and client work in France. |
| English | C2 | Working language for documentation, upstream open-source contribution and pull-request review, and all technical reading. |
| German | B1 | Conversational and reading level. |
English in practiceUpstream contributions, written and reviewed in English