2018 · X, the moonshot factory
An internship on Project Taara, X's effort to deliver high-speed internet through the air using light. I built hardware and software to measure how the optical link performed on the bench.
Taara sends internet over beams of light through open air, so the atmosphere is part of the system. You can’t test against real weather on demand, though. The team needed a way to recreate atmospheric conditions indoors, on a bench, and repeat them exactly.
Built and tested the hardware and software for the emulator, then presented the findings to senior leadership.
Set up and tested an ASIC for a new modulation scheme planned for future systems.
Wrote the data-processing pipeline behind a telemetry and performance visualizer, which made it faster for the team to see how the system was doing.
The emulator gave the team a repeatable stand-in for the sky, so they could measure link performance in the lab. The telemetry tools made it quicker to see how the system was performing.