Hovhannes
Mkrtumyan
I work across the whole stack of reality: from theories of information and spacetime, through RF front ends, RFSoC and SDR drivers, down to the PCB, firmware, cloud and AI agents that turn an idea into a shipped device.
Scientist by curiosity, engineer by trade.
Embedded-systems and RF engineer with 15+ years across industrial automation, IoT products and software-defined radio, grounded in physics and electrical engineering (M.S. EE, NPUA; B.S. Physics in progress, YSU).
Today I build SDR drivers and DSP pipelines in C/C++ — UHD, DPDK, Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC — for a multi-channel RF spectrum-sensing platform. Before that I spent a decade designing power-monitoring and automation systems for Armenia's national grid, and led hardware teams building smart devices end to end.
In parallel I do theoretical work on information, computation and gravity and applied sensing research — always with equations first, a falsifiable prediction, and a measurement plan.
I ship complete systems: physics model → RF / analog front end → PCB → firmware → enclosure → cloud dashboard → AI automation.
Theories & research
Two bodies of work: a theoretical framework where information is the primitive — gravity as a throttled clock, measurement as a source of mass-energy, black holes as saturated memory — and LODESTONE, an applied electromagnetic-sensing study built on exact solutions and computed link budgets. Every claim carries a decision rule and an experiment that could prove it wrong.
From the antenna to the algorithm.
Hands-on across the full receive chain — RF front ends and antennas, GSPS data converters on Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC, UHD/USRP drivers, DPDK line-rate streaming, and the DSP that turns raw IQ into decisions.
Any hardware. Including the hard RF problems.
Strong production experience with SDRs and RFSoC: driver development, high-rate streaming, AGC and gain calibration, noise-floor, LO-leakage and spur analysis, RF test & measurement.
Beyond SDR I design custom modulations, antennas and links where off-the-shelf fails — LoRa through solid concrete, a 30 kHz system that uses rebar as the antenna, power-line comms, HV current telemetry. If it can be specified, I can implement it: RF, analog, digital, firmware or FPGA.
Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC
RF data converters, NCO/DDC configuration, PL↔PS data movement, embedded Linux bring-up (U-Boot, systemd, cross-compilation) and firmware verification.
UHD / USRP drivers
C/C++ driver development, multi-channel streaming, timed commands, tuning and gain tables, integration testing against real hardware.
Line-rate IQ streaming
DPDK poll-mode drivers, hugepages, zero-copy packet paths and back-pressure handling so no sample is dropped at high rates.
Calibration & measurement
AGC loops, gain calibration, noise-floor, LO-leakage and spur analysis, IQ captures and root-cause analysis with spectrum analyzers.
DSP pipelines
FFT, Welch PSD, windowing, IIR/FIR, DC blockers, adaptive NLMS filtering, matched filtering and ML-based signal classification.
Custom radios & antennas
Custom CC1101 / LoRa-style modulations, PLC over mains, BLE at 200 m with custom antennas, FPGA SDR, RF triangulation, GNSS & LTE.
Silicon, copper & firmware.
Schematic to Gerbers to a field-deployed fleet. Board bring-up, low-noise analog, power design, firmware and the enclosure around it.
// MCUs & SoCs
- Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC
- ESP32 / S2 / S3 / P4
- STM32 G0 / H7 / WB
- nRF51 / nRF52, DA14580
- Artix-7 FPGA
- AD9363 · CC1101 · SX1278
// Buses & links
- Modbus RTU / RS485
- ESP-NOW mesh
- CAN · SPI · I²C · I²S · UART
- USB HID / CDC composite
- LTE Cat-1 · GPRS · GNSS
- LoRa · BLE · MQTT
// PCB & analog
- KiCad 9 · Altium Designer
- Automated DRC gating
- Low-noise front ends (OPA16xx, LT3042)
- Class-D audio, motor drivers
- Automotive protection
- Flex PCB
// Firmware & tools
- ESP-IDF · FreeRTOS
- STM32 HAL · bare metal
- Embedded Linux · U-Boot
- LVGL user interfaces
- CadQuery · Fusion 360
- Spectrum & logic analyzers
Things I've built.
A selection across RF, research, embedded, PCB, AI agents, web and games. Filter by domain.
Running in production.
Products I've built and deployed on my own infrastructure. Each tile pings its site from your browser — live status and round-trip time.
Experience & education.
Education
Achievements
Languages
Have a hard problem? Let's solve it.
RF and SDR systems, hardware from scratch, research collaborations in physics or sensing — open to remote work and new projects.