Jason Pennington, Ph.D.
Education
- Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, Air Force Institute of Technology, 2014
- M.S., Computer Engineering, Miami University, 2011
- B.S., Computer Engineering, Miami University, 2009
Accomplishments
- Implemented Image Segmentation Algorithm using K-Means Clustering
- Designed a time and frequency domain channel estimator for a scalable MIMO-OFDM system.
- Implemented real-time non-linear reconstructor adaptive optics algorithm on Virtex-5.
- Designed and implemented radar waveforms targeting a Xilinx RFSoC FPGA and ARM processor.
Programming Skills
- Mathworks MATLAB ®
- VHDL Programming
Research Experience
Senior FPGA Design Engineer, Defense Engineering Corp. - Jan. 2020 - Present
- Implemented Digital Beamforming Algorithms on the Xilinx RFSoC ZCU11 Evaluation Board
- Mentored an intern in VHDL and embedded processing
- Designed and implemented GMTI and SAR Radar algorithms.
Principle FPGA Design Engineer, Northrop Grumman Corp. - Oct. 2016 - Dec. 2019
- Modeling and Simulating the detection and classification of signals.
- Selected as protege in competitive mentoring program in 2019.
- Awarded IP disclosure for novel work in field of embedded processing
- Implemented signal processing algorithms on Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGA
- Designed and implemented low-power system targeting Xilinx Spartan-6
Research Computer Engineer, Air Force Research Laboratory - June 2014 - Sept. 2016
- Design and develops techniques in hardware assurance for the Avionics Vulnerabilities and Mitigations Branch.
- Project lead of 5 hardware assurance projects.
- Active role in mentoring young engineer’s in hardware design.
- Manages Government purchase card budget.
- IR&D proposal awarded, $75k, for Electronic Warfare Receiver Design
- Mentored modulation detection algorithm research; implementation on USRP version 2
- Research Sub-Nyquist sampling to increase bandwidth
- Consultant on inverse beamforming thesis to null jamming transmitter.
- IR&D proposal awarded, $50k, for Adaptive Optics Algorithm implementation
- Functionally verified in ModelSim branch-point tolerant reconstructor; implemented in VHDL
- Integrated new HDL blocks in existing system with 96% utilization on Virtex-5 S95t;
- Effectively communicated design tradeoffs and performance issues with embedded processing to adaptive optics experts
Graduate Research Assistant, Air Force Institute of Technology - June 2011 - May 2014
- Large Scale MIMO Communications
- Designed MIMO transceiver utilizing spatial and frequency separation for pilot allocation in Mathworks MATLAB ®.
- Designed and Implemented frequency separation MIMO transceiver in VHDL, simulated in Mentor Graphics ModelSim R Simulator.
- Simulated topology induced delay in MIMO transceiver - designed a time-domain based equalizer to remove interference.
- Time Difference of Arrival Positioning
- Designed and simulated a scheme for synchronizing multiple receivers in MATLAB ®.
- Simulated a time of arrival estimation algorithm, that exploits signal structure, in Mathworks MATLAB ®.
- Implemented time of arrival estimation algorithm and synchronizing algorithm on a Virtex-4 FPGA.
Graduate Research Assistant, Miami University - May 2009 - May 2011
- Implemented electronic warfare (EW) techniques on the TI-TMS320C6416 fixed point DSP. (Frequency and Power estimation)
- Investigated automatic modulation determination schemes.
- Investigated EW receiver characteristic extraction.
Graduate Researcher, Air Force Institute of Technology - Summer 2010
- Created documentation for a Software Defined Radio, the Wireless open-Access Research Platform (WARP).
- Implemented signal strength recording system to collect data to verify positioning models.
- Collected, organized and compared data from multiple instrument readings with existing sources.
- Signal Processing Lab Manager - Organized and Facilitated lab resources for student use.
Design Team Member - Electroencephalogram Project, Miami University - August 2008 - May 2009
- Won 2nd-place out of 20 teams in the poster presentation session.
- Worked with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital on applying signal processing techniques (i.e. FFT, wavelets, and chirplets) in EEG data.
Teaching Experience
Miami University Adjunct Professor – Oxford Ohio August 2014 - Present
- Committee member of a thesis on automatic modulation detection.
- Senior Design Co-Advisor with projects Automotive Diagnostic via Sensor Data Fusion and Gamify Finances
- Invited as guest lecturer for talk on MIMO Communications
Air Force Institute of Technology Adjunct Professor Sept. 2015 - Oct. 2017
- Committee member of four MS seeking students. Topics include: Radio Tomographic Imaging and Anti-Jam beamforming.
- Hardware Design Fundamentals Short Course - September 2015 and 2016
- Facilitated 10 demos for Cyberspace 300 courses –taught wireless jamming fundamentals to 300+ Cyber professionals.
Publications
- J. R. Pennington and R. K. Martin, “Utilization of Inter-Block Interference in MIMO-OFDM Communication Systems,” in Milcom 2018 Track 4 - System Perspectives (Milcom 2018 Track 4), Los Angeles, USA, October 2018, 6 pages.
- R. K. Martin, A. King, J. Pennington, R. Thomas, R. Lenahan, and C. Lawyer,“Modeling and Mitigating Noise and Nuisance Parameters in Received Signal Strength Positioning,” IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 60, no.10, Oct. 2012, pp. 5451-5463.
- A. Brueggen, L. Burchett, S. Hartzell, J. Pennington, J. Wilson, R. Martin, A. Terzuoli, E. Walton and A. Tubbs, “Aerostat Communication Design,” 15th International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics (ANTEM), 2012, 1-3.
- R. K. Martin, A. King, R. W. Thomas, and J. Pennington, “Practical Limits in RSS-Based Positioning,” in Proc. Intl. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Prague, Czech Republic, May 2011, 4 pages.
- M. Song, J. R. Pennington, M. Silvius, R. Thomas, and R. K. Martin, “Design and Performance Tradeoffs in Digital Radio Processing Architectures,” in Proc. of SDR Forum 2010, December 2010, 6 pages.