Keith Walters

Keith Walters
612-437-5779
Minneapolis, MN 55369

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area
Field Application Engineer at Semtech
Summary
Experienced Electrical Engineering professional with extensive knowledge of RF transceivers, EMI/EMC
compliance, NFC/RFID design, MCU programming, schematic entry and PCB layout.
• Application support and customer sales for a large range of applications including medical, consumer,
industrial, and defense. Identified key opportunities for design in/win to support quarterly sales targets.
• Embedded systems design expert. Designed and debugged systems incorporating a variety of processors
(ARM Cortex, PIC, AVR, HC12, 8051) and communications interfaces (USB, CAN, Ethernet, RS232/485).
• Firmware programming experience in C and assembly language.
• RFID/NFC expert. Well versed in NFC/RFID standards and technology. Performed RFID reader debug and
antenna tuning to get customers to production quickly.
• VHDL programming experience with Xilinx, Altera and Lattice FPGAs and CPLDs.
• RF and EMI experience. Designed low-power ISM band radio transmitters and receivers. Have considerable
experience with 2.4GHz radios and communication protocols (802.15.4, BLE, etc.).
• Performed schematic entry and PWB layout with Cadence, PADS, OrCAD, Viewlogic, and Altium CAD
tools.
• Regulatory experience (FCC, UL, TUV, CE, MIL-STD, etc.).
Experience
Field Application Engineer at Semtech
February 2017 – Present (2 months)
Customer support with specific emphasis on LoRa radio transceivers and IoT applications.
Field Applications Engineer at NXP Semiconductors
May 2010 – January 2017 (6 years 9 months)
• Performed numerous ARM Cortex-M design reviews and supported code debug for a variety of
development environments (Keil, IAR, GCC).
• RFID (LF/HF/UHF) expert. Developed and debugged numerous RFID reader systems and performed
antenna tuning to optimize performance in real-world environments.
• Experience with low-power wireless transceivers and communications standards (BLE, 802.15.4, ISM
band).
• Utilized Salesforce.com for customer project tracking and technical support requests.
• Presented at numerous customer and distribution seminars/webinars on topics such as M2M/IoT, USB,
802.15.4/ZigBee, MCU, and NFC.
Field Applications Engineer at Atmel
May 2007 – May 2010 (3 years 1 month)
• Extensive knowledge of ARM 7/9/Cortex-M and AVR Tiny, MEGA, XMEGA and AVR32
microprocessors as well as numerous software development environments (Keil, IAR, Eclipse/GCC, AVR
Studio) and associated development boards and debugging tools.
• Performed numerous customer and distribution seminars on microcontrollers, 802.15.4 ZigBee, USB and
CAN communications protocols.
• Developed several capacitive touch sensor systems for a variety of HMI applications.
• Assisted in customer hardware and software design reviews.
• Used Model N for CRM to customer project milestones, support issues and provide opportunity status to
regional sales and marketing.
Senior Electrical Engineer at BAE Systems
December 2001 – April 2007 (5 years 5 months)
• Designed battery powered GPS guided munitions for the US Army that employed a PowerPC processor,
DDR memory and high efficiency switched-mode power supplies to power guidance electronics.
• Developed a multi-axis servo motor controller that incorporated multiple Xilinx FPGAs, a TI DSP card,
multi-channel ADCs/DACs, PCI and VME communications busses.
• Designed main control panel for Crusader self-propelled howitzer using a Freescale 68HC12 class
microcontroller and Altera CPLD. Wrote firmware in C and VHDL. Design employed a high speed CAN
(SAE J1939) and RS422 serial communications busses.
• Performed both schematic entry and PWB layout of circuit boards using OrCAD.
• Member of EMC compliance and test team to ensure all designs met MIL-STD-461 and 464.
Electrical Engineer at Remote Technologies
December 1999 – November 2001 (2 years)
• Designed IR/RF wireless A/V system control accessories based on PIC16/18. Experienced with network
analyzers, spectrum analyzers, RF signal generators and basic RF lab equipment.
• Designed a hand-held, battery powered, remote control incorporating an 8051 microcontroller, ISM band
RF transmitter, switch-mode power converter and LCD controller for the consumer market.
• Wrote firmware for embedded microcontrollers using MPLAB. Performed schematic entry and PWB layout
using OrCAD.
Electrical Engineer at Beckman Coulter
June 1998 – November 1999 (1 year 6 months)
• Created a novel fluid level detector employing an analog VCO, an Altera CPLD and a PIC16
microcontroller for data processing and serial communications to main system controller.
• Designed an ultrasonic mixer for combining patient samples with reagents using a PIC16 microcontroller
for control and an Altera CPLD to implement an ISA bus communications interface.
• Developed firmware for PIC16 microcontrollers using MPLAB and CPLD code using MAX+PLUS II.
Performed schematic entry and PWB layout using OrCAD and PADS.
Electrical Engineer at Noran Instruments
September 1996 – June 1998 (1 year 10 months)
• Redesigned several product lines to meet CISPR22 EMI requirements using an on-site screen room,
spectrum analyzers and RF signal generators.
• Created a brushless DC motor controller ISA card for a new series of low cost spectrometers. Reduced
component count of original design by over 35% while reducing EMI and improving reliability.
• Designed an X-Ray detector controller using an 8051-based microcontroller and a Lattice PLD. Performed
schematic and PWB layout using Viewlogic and PADS.
Education
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
MS, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, 1987 – 2000
Keith Walters
Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area
Field Application Engineer at Semtech