Introduction
In this final post, I will guide you through the last month of this extraordinary adventure. December started with my first final exam, which took place outside the regular finals period to give us an extra week to prepare the presentation of the project. The first week also another friend from Belgium visited, so we certainly spent some quality time together in between my project work. The rest of the month was sadly all about the final exams and projects, because once they were over, it was time for me to go home. Luckily we’re not at that point yet and December means Christmas season! This picture shows two of the many decorations in New York City, the beautifully lit College Walk of Columbia on the left, and the gigantic Rockefeller Christmas tree on the right:
To follow up on the previous post: I am happy to report that my Power Management ICs exam went very well I think! Luckily for me, it was multiple choice and not too difficult, so even though the conditions were not ideal, it worked out in the end. This means the first final is over, and we just have to finish the project for that course. The presentation is next week already, so there is a lot of work ahead.
Another Visitor
In between working on the four different projects, with all deadlines coming closer, there was fortunately still time to spend time with my friend and enjoy New York. We mostly did a lot of walking together in downtown and midtown Manhattan and my favorite: the Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Bridge Walk itself. I think that view will remain equally amazing every time I’ll walk it. I think that might be my number one recommendation for visiting NYC.
Furthermore, I also booked tickets to visit the crown of the Statue of Liberty months in advance (that was actually necessary, it’s always fully booked) and therefore I had been looking forward to that for a long time. I have to say that it was a great experience, certainly because the ticket is actually not more expensive than the regular one for only the island and the view from the pedestal is very nice. From the crown itself, you can’t see very much, because it’s so small. However, the experience itself of walking all the way up is still worth it! The picture below shows the view from the crown on the New York bay:
Projects and Final Exams
Let’s talk a bit about the projects: for Systen-On-Chip Platforms, we have to design an accelerator for a convolutional neural network layer in SystemC, which is a library of C++ to describe hardware on a high level. The goal is then to use High Level Synthesis to implement the SystemC code on an FPGA or a custom ASIC. This project was a big extension of the homework assignments, which introduced the concepts of the neural network layer in (non-synthesizable at that point) SystemC. It was very rewarding to use the HLS tool to quickly generate multiple versions of the hardware implementation, without actually changing the code. After the accelerator part was done, the second goal was to integrate our design in a full SoC with a CPU core and memory and test that on an FPGA. That was achieved using ESP, an open-source research platform for system-on-chip design, developed by the system level design research group of professor Carloni at Columbia University. Personally, I found the second part the most interesting, it was very cool to quickly generate a full system-on-chip with a custom accelerator and actually use it!
For RF Measurements, the only thing left at this point, since we finished the lab sessions were we learned how to use the instruments already, was to solder and measure our own filter PCB. When the PCB was delivered, we were very happy it got produced fully correctly and since we designed the components with a nice distance separating them, we thought the soldering would be very possible. Luckily, my teammate already had experience soldering 0402 components, since they are extremely tiny (1 mm x 0.5 mm) and I am not very handy. As you can see in the banner image of this post, the result was very beautiful, and I am happy to say that it worked very well. There were two small deviations from the required specification, probably due to a non-ideal soldering connection. In the picture below you can see me trying to fix it. Sadly I was not able to and the filter wasn’t perfect. However, we are still very happy with the result.
The project of Power Management Integrated Circuits was the design of a power regulator. We had a free choice of the exact topology we wanted to implement, which was very fun. That also made the presentations more interesting, since everyone had something different. My teammates and I chose to design a low-dropout regulator, based on the flipped voltage follower topology. In the end, our design had reached some very nice specifications, and we were able to present the interesting circuit to the rest of the class. Since not many people had heard of the flipped voltage follower, we received very positive feedback on the presentation.
Finally, for Millimeter-Wave IC Design, the project goal was to design a direct down conversion receiver front-end, consisting of a low noise amplifier, a voltage controlled oscillator, a mixer and a baseband amplifier at 60 GHz in a team of three students. To reach all specifications for this project was also very challenging, and it took a lot of time. In the end, with excellent team work, we got everything working. It was very satisfying and a big relief to see the beautiful simulation results, since that was the last project to finish!
In between the final project deadlines, we also had our final exams, it certainly took some careful planning to balance all the work. Nevertheless, I am happy to say that two exams went very well and the third one was still acceptable, but sadly due to the time pressure I did make some calculation mistakes. In spite of that, I am still looking forward to receiving my final grades, my hopes are up!
The Return Home
Unfortunately, the end of my adventure has arrived. After the final deadline, I only left one day to pack my bags and say my goodbyes, because than it was still possible to arrive home to celebrate Christmas with my family. After I finished packing, I went on a final walk in the City, to visit the Christmas market in Bryant Park. It was packed! I think that was the busiest day I had seen in the entire semester, probably because it was the day before Christmas Eve after all. On the way home, I walked via the decorations on Fifth Avenue and the ice rink in Central Park. Here’s a picture:
December 24th, the final day: as a last activity, I went on a short walk in the Upper West Side, I passed Columbia and enjoyed the nature of Riverside park a bit more. On the way back, I wanted to treat myself to a good American lunch before the (probably disappointing) airplane food this evening. Therefore, I went to the nearby Five Guys for a final time. This is also a good moment to give my unbiased opinion on the burger chains I tried. My favorites are clearly Five Guys and Wendy’s, the latter was a big surprise, since I was not expecting too much of it and I thought it would be similar to McDonald’s. The best value for money was certainly In-N-Out burger for me, it was very cheap, and the burgers were very tasty! Sadly, I only tried it once, since it’s only available on the West Coast. The middle of the road chains, were in my opinion Shake Shack, Bareburger, Jack in the Box and Culver’s, they all had very good burgers, but were just not the best in my opinion. In the case of Bareburger, it was excellent, maybe even the best, but it was a little too expensive in comparison to the competition. Finally, McDonald’s was just a big disappointment, the burgers are not up to the level of the other joints. The only positive is that they are opened 24/7. As you can see from the long sidetrack, I really like hamburgers.
That brings my time in New York to an end. I would like to express my gratitude to my parents, for supporting me on this big adventure. Also, a big thanks to KU Leuven, the Faculty of Engineering Science, ESAT, the ENGenius fund and especially professor Reynaert and Steyaert for granting me this amazing opportunity and helping with the administrative difficulties. Thank you to all the previous ENGenius student for providing assistance with all the paperwork and applications necessary. And, most importantly, thank you to Melexis for making this all possible for a student every year. It was truly a unique and extremely educational experience.
Finally, also a big thank you for reading this blog! It was an honor to write it.
Pieter-Antonio Fernandez