RF & Satellite Communications Engineer · UK 🇬🇧 · MSc Mobile & Satellite Communication (Distinction)
🛰️ Overpass — live 5G-NTN pass analyzer Pick any of 40+ cities worldwide and see what a 5G phone would experience from a satellite passing overhead — link quality, data rate, sync cost, handover and latency — from real orbital data, self-refreshed daily.
Building open engineering tools at the intersection of AI · 5G/6G · Satellite (Non-Terrestrial Networks).
I design and integrate RF and SDR systems — I built the University of South Wales' first operational satellite ground station end-to-end, and I've delivered large-scale 4G/5G RAN programmes across multiple operators. Right now I'm building a public series of small, real, tested tools exploring how AI meets satellite communications.
MIET · IEEE · IEEE ComSoc · SSPI · Finalist, Airbus Space Competition UK 2024
A build-in-public series analysing 5G Non-Terrestrial Networks — the technology connecting phones directly to low-orbit satellites like Starlink — using real, live satellite data rather than textbook assumptions.
One engineering problem per week, each with working code, a passing test suite, and an honest write-up — including the results where the simple approach beat the clever one. The weeks build from "can we see a satellite" through sync, handover, throughput and latency, into a single tool that runs the whole chain end to end.
👉 Start here — ntn-toolkit: the whole series tied together. One command produces a full pass report — geometry, link, throughput, pre-compensation, handover and latency — from live satellite data.
Can we see it? (visibility & orbits)
- ntn-link-budget — Satellite link budget calculator: does the link close, across elevation angles? (FSPL → C/N0 → Eb/N0 → margin)
- ntn-pass-predictor — Feeds a real live Starlink pass (Celestrak + SGP4) into the link budget — real elevation, range and Doppler over an actual pass over Aberdeen
- ntn-multi-sat-scheduler — Tracks several live satellites at once and decides which one should carry the link, detecting real hand-off events
- ntn-sat-predictor-ml — Machine-learning model for satellite visibility duration, with an honest comparison of greedy vs ML hand-off (Random Forest + SGP4)
Can we stay in sync? (5G timing, Doppler & pre-compensation)
- ntn-5g-timing-doppler — Where standard 5G NR breaks over a satellite: timing advance and Doppler measured against real 3GPP limits
- ntn-5g-ntn-precomp — 3GPP Release-17 GNSS-assisted pre-compensation over a real pass, and how often it must be refreshed
- ntn-adaptive-precomp — Adaptive vs fixed refresh scheduling — an honest result: timing binds, and a well-chosen fixed rate is hard to beat
Which satellite, and how much data? (handover, throughput, latency)
- ntn-precomp-aware-handover — Strongest-signal vs cheapest-to-sync handover — they turn out to mostly agree, and here's why
- ntn-link-adaptation — SNR → CQI → throughput over a pass: visibility isn't capacity — most data arrives in a short high-elevation window
- ntn-latency-budget — Propagation delay, HARQ and TCP over a pass: HARQ stalling is numerology-dependent
Bringing it together
- ntn-toolkit — One package running the whole chain end to end into a single live pass report + dashboard
- ntn-flagship (Overpass) — the capstone: a live web app wrapping the whole toolkit. Pick any of 40+ cities and see the full 5G-NTN pass analysis in your browser.
▶️ Try it live
- Python — the whole portfolio
- Skyfield + SGP4 — propagating satellite orbits from real data
- Live TLE data from Celestrak — the actual current positions of Starlink satellites
- scikit-learn — the machine-learning parts
- NumPy · Matplotlib · pandas — computation and plots
- pytest — every project has a passing test suite
- 3GPP standards — 5G parameters (timing budgets, frequency tolerances, HARQ, CQI tables) grounded in the actual telecom specs, not made-up numbers
- Git / GitHub — everything public and MIT-licensed, so anyone can use it
Also: MATLAB · SDR (SDRplay, ICOM) · Ansys STK · RF & antenna integration · 3GPP (RAN1/RAN4) · OSS/EMS
Microsoft Azure
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
- Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Virtual Desktop Specialty
Programming
- Python 3 Programming Specialization — University of Michigan (Coursera)
- Medium:@shaifiqbal — technical write-ups on each project
- Newsletter:The Signals AI — build-in-public, plain-language version of each week