Project Description:

Horizon have developed several different signal acquisition based units and payloads supporting the company’s aeronautical and satellite activities. The existing signal acquisition modules are used to capture various signals of interest, including L-band satellite phones, VHF-band ship identification beacons (AIS) and maritime S-band and X-band radar signals.

The company has an ongoing research and development programme that looks to enhance the capability and performance of future signal acquisition units, and to increase the type of signals of interest that can be observed. As part of these activities the company is looking to evaluate the performance of different microprocessors, digital signal processor devices and software defined radios for potential inclusion into next generation units and to support other businessopportunities.

The objective of this project is to develop and characterise a prototype signal acquisition module based on the Raspberry Pi 5 Single Board Computer, RaspberryPi computer module and Limemicro PCIe LM7002 Software Defined Radio daughterboard.

The project involves:

• Defining the signal acquisition module system design, interfaces, and components.

• Gaining an understanding of the key components of the system.

• Developing a characterisation and test plan.

• Acquiring the system components.

• Integrating the components to produce a prototype signal acquisition module.

• Generating test code to exercise the signal acquisition module.

• Performing the characterisation and test activities.

• Capturing and documenting the design, test results, and lessons learnt.

In addition to the above tasks, the opportunity may exist to develop a printed circuit for interfacing of the processor to multiple software defined daughterboards.

• Find out more about SPIN and explore FAQs here.

The work placement can be at either the company’s offices in Reading, Berkshire, or in Farnborough, Hampshire.

Minimum requirements:

The candidate must

- Be able to work independently and as part of a team.

- Be a quick learner, curious and creative.

- Be open to new challenges.

- Have knowledge and experience with Raspberry Pi’s

- have knowledge of Linux based operating systems

- Have software knowledge, python, c, etc.

- Be a UK passport holder.*

- Be older than 18.*

(* Site access requirement)

Desirable requirements:

To be undertaking further education in the following disciplines:

- Engineering, Electronics, Computer Science, Physics, Maths or similar.

This job description set outs the skills and experience we believe are needed to be able to do this job but, research also tells us women are much more likely than men to take this list of requirements as absolute and self-select out of the process. If you think you can deliver this role then we want to hear from you, regardless of the boxes you didn’t tick.