Today is the last day of externship and as an intern at Qualcomm, I've immersed myself into the professional world full of technology and communication. I put the last finishing touches to my EPOL presentation (shown below.) From my experience I've gained a stronger understanding of my major and the paths I should take in college. Not only that, but I began to appreciate the time I dedicated to my project as well (even though there were pitfalls.) Qualities that I saw in the people around me is the way they use their "language" to articulate a certain problem or action needed for a task. Like, "A Band 4 Amp is used to permeate a certain frequency band needed for individual carriers." It amazes me how fluent my mentors are when explaining their thoughts or ideas and it inspires me to strive for better communication skills. The reason I bring this up is because I saw communication as one of my weaknesses and being able to articulate what is on my mind is not always an easy task. This is something very important for me, not just for school, but for the real world as well because creating my network will only broaden my opportunity horizons. However, sometimes I wonder if taking this step in my engineering career is the right choice for me. Inevitably I will always run into a life altering situation and I've always wondered whether or not this career is the right choice for me? Although I have the choice of taking the easier route I'm reminded of my aspirations and always motivated to achieve my goal in life. Hearing the life stories of my mentors influenced my perspective of the world quite a bit. Some ideas and thoughts dampening my dreams, but most are all the more inspiring. I've learned that it doesn't matter what I do in life, as long as I'm happy and make the right decisions. My mentors come from all sorts of backgrounds and some of their career paths were not at all correlated to their position today, but they found their place in the world through their own means and refined their strengths in life. Thus, it's been an honor to intern for Qualcomm and this externsip experience has not only taught me about RF Repeaters, but it's also inspired me to communicate my dreams and efforts to the world.
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I've been working hard on my project for the past couple days on the project, and although I was the ball was rolled fairly slow, I was able to get the job done. Although there were many obstacles I had to overcome, I'm glad I was able to learn from them and work my way back up to the product I have now. Furthermore, I was able to get the RF Repeater to permeate the signal we wanted within Band 2 along with a replacement antenna. Before the test there is no service as shown below in the first picture. After powering the repeater there is a gain of +10 dbm giving us 3 bars. The last picture is with a commercial Wilson repeater certified by the FCC, thus providing more coverage. My mentor, Pat (below), is explaining the differences between the two amplifiers. Although, they perform the same purpose, they support different frequency bands. Wilson supports Band 4 and my repeater supports Band 2. Throughout this period of externship I've expanded my horizons within my career path, and working alongside Destin and my colleagues. I've accomplished a lot in this short time span and it's reflective within the work I've done at Qualcomm. I learned how much focus and attention to detail is required within the software side of engineering and it's helped me with my work on my Repeater project as well.
I've enjoyed all my experiences at Qualcomm (Lab Ops and ThinkaBit) and cherished every fun moment I had with great people. I've gained so much skills needed for the professional world and it's helped me further my confidence in my education. It's pushed me to strive harder and achieve my Computer Science major at UC Irvine. Besides that, my work here is significant to me because this is something I want to get into in terms of my education and future. I learned that my work ethic is based on my interests and motivations. Honestly, I wouldn't do something that I didn't love. I was fortunately, able to finish my RF Repeater and it is now able to amplify signal. However, the frequency we thought T-Mobile was in (1210-1255 dbm) is over our calculations. So we have to look for another Frequency Band. Below, is the block diagram Pat and I worked on to explain how the repeater essentially works. I worked in the lab at Building WT because my building (Q) was full and I needed a quiet space to figure out and understand each component. Because we were unable to find an adapter for the power supply port I stripped the existing wires and hooked up banana wires. I soldered the cut/exposed ends together and used a "plastic straw" to hold them in place and keep them from shorting out. Below is the RF Repeater on a lab bench ready to be deployed alongside an indoor antenna. I was unfortunately unable to find a signal as mentioned before. However, when using the spectrum analyzer we were able to get a gain of 10 dp from the existing -70 dbm in the lab. Originally the power output from the antenna drop in the lab was around -70 dbm. Through the repeater you can see the gain of 10 below.
Today we took inventory for my project and gathered materials to make it. Below is the RF Repeater I will be using and it is fairly similar to the one I disassembled. Parts include: a chassis, dual amps, a terminal block and filters. Below is a old RF Repeater we found at one of the buildings. We were unable to use this because it didn't include the parts we needed like an AWS Band Amplifier. Daniel graduated from Devry University in Program Management and got his job at Qualcomm through the navy. Sean is a grizzled veteran of the US Army Infantry. After he got tired of being awesome, he settled down, got married, and joined Qualcomm's lab ops team.
Today, I worked on my program and the tutorial I followed discussed FPS (Frames Per Second) thus improving my progress in C#. I was able to make my playerUnit move with key presses. Initially, it would trace the path it used with each frame, however, I fixed that with certain functions. Below is the code I used to initiate keyboard commands to allow the playerUnit to move across the screen. The "@" is the playerUnit. It is in its initial position. Keyboard inputs allow the playerUnit to move any direction (WASD). The X is the enemyUnit. I am still coding the AI code for it to move on its own.
Took a day off from working on my game to eat tacos and canoe at Crown Point, Mission Bay, San Diego! Today was a team builder, so everyone took off work to come here instead.
Today I polished up my code and worked on the next parts of the beginner tutorials I'm watching. The tutorials I followed went in depth in explaining sub-classes and inheritance, and it also helped me set up a basic console game. Although it is fairly basic with a playerUnit and a enemyUnit, the tutorials are helping me understand the structure of code and how classes interact with other classes.
Today my internship teacher, Dr. Don, came to visit and we discussed the scope of my project and gave him a tour of building Q. I talked to him about the dilemma I ran into at my school, thus, provided my alternative plan to simulating a no service zone within the Qualcomm site. I provided specifics as to what cell bands we plan to use and an overview of the presentation of my project. Besides that, I'm not too worried about my project failing because it's within parameters we can change for testing/demo purposes. I also worked on improving my understanding of C# code after the meeting. I accomplished class specifications and object links to my main program.
Today I dived in to more C# coding and learned about classes, void loops and other types of console commands. Although they are very rudimentary, it's an important step to learning the bare basics of the language. It is still confusing to me because the tutorials I am following ramp up in pace as I progress, however, this learning curve is a step up to the fast pace work I may be doing in response to my major. While this isn't a part of my project, I see this as an opportunity to learn new things and it helps me get a head start in my career. Above is a picture of my workstation. To the left is the code I am writing and to the right is the tutorial I am following.
Below is the code I wrote. This code includes the Unit class and the various functions the program follows. It's my second week of internship working on my project, and although progress has been slow, I'm not too worried of the final product. It saddens me, that my internship partner is making more progress on his project than I am because he's able to work on it through his own means. However, I've take this free time to learn C# alongside him and it's helped me understand the language a lot more.
Besides that, I took a walk around the Qualcomm building with my mentor, Pat, and we surveyed our options for cell phone reception and identified various cell towers. We used an app called, "Open Signal" and this gave us information about the cell towers around us and showed the power output it was emanating. |
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