About
About Me
I’m Santhosh Kumar Pilakkat, a Senior Systems Architect based in Singapore with 30+ years of experience delivering mission-critical systems across telecommunications, defence-grade SDR platforms, and national-scale R&D programs.
Most recently I was a Senior Principal Research Engineer at A*STAR’s Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) (July 2000 – March 2025), where I led architecture for industrial 5G, Software-Defined Radio, IIoT, and secure communications programs.
What I Write About
This blog documents my technical explorations across the following areas:
- 5G & Wireless — Private 5G, TSN over 5G, LTE, OFDM, adaptive modulation
- Software-Defined Radio (SDR) — FPGA-based modem design, JTRS SCA, waveform development
- IIoT & Smart Manufacturing — RAMI 4.0, IIC IIRA, industrial connectivity
- FPGA & Embedded Systems — Xilinx Zynq/UltraScale/Virtex, VHDL/Verilog/SystemC, PCIe, AXI
- Systems Architecture & MBSE — SysML/UML, IBM Rhapsody, model-driven development
- Software & OS — Embedded Linux, RTOS (VxWorks, FreeRTOS), C/C++, Python, Rust
- DIY Electronics & Software — Personal projects at the intersection of hardware and software
Background
- M.Tech in Software Engineering — National University of Singapore (ISS), 2003–2005
- B.Tech in Electronics Engineering — National Institute of Technology (NIT) Calicut, India, 1982–1987