Steering Group Committee

Steering Group Committee

Stefano Ruffini - ITSF Chairman, Expert Ericsson Research, Ericsson email»
Stefano graduated in Telecommunication Engineering from the University of Rome " La Sapienza" (Italy) and joined Ericsson in 1993 and has been working on synchronization aspects for more than 20 years. He is one of the Ericsson experts working on 5G transport and sync aspects. He is currently working in the Optical Sysems research area in the Ericsson Research organization.
One of the Ericsson experts working on the evolution of the mobile backhaul/fronthaul networks and on the related network synchronization solutions, Stefano has been working on synchronization aspects for more than 20 years. He is currently actively contributing to ITU-T SG15 Q13 (serving as rapporteur) and IEEE1588 (serving as vice-chair of the New Feature subcommittee) and to other relevant synchronization standardization bodies and forums. Stefano has published several international journal papers and delivered presentations at various conferences. Co-author of a book dealing with IEEE1588 and Synchronous Ethernet, Stefano is also a member of the ITSF (International Telecom Sync Forum) and WSTS (Workshop on Synchronization in Telecommunication Systems) steering groups.

Duke Buckner - ITSF Co-Chairman and Head of Strategic Marketing, Microchip email»
Duke is the head of strategy and business development for the Microchip Frequency and Time Division. He has more than 30 years of experience in communications and data network industry with 20 years directly related to the timing and synchronization aspect of digital networks. Duke’s career began with the US Air Force and as a telecommunications network analyst for NASA at the emergence of the Internet era, becoming an expert in a variety of protocols and networking design. He has held strategic and managerial roles in various capacities including engineering, global account sales, and most recently the head of North American sales. In his current role, Duke is responsible for the strategic guidance of product and development efforts to meet the synchronization needs of the evolving communications infrastructure.

Chris Farrow - ITSF Vice Chairman and Technical Manager, Chronos Technology email»
Chris has been "in sync" since the mid-1990s when he was involved in significant upgrades with the UK's major Telecom Operators as they rolled out SDH and their first dedicated Sync Networks. Chris joined Chronos from Marconi's UK Technical Assistance Centre in Liverpool in January 2006. At Marconi Chris was a sync product specialist and support engineer for all of Marconi's product portfolio. At Chronos Chris is responsible for professional services focused on the sync product area including delivery of Synchronisation MasterClass, Sync Audit, Network Planning consultancy, customer demonstrations and product development.

Pedro Antao - Senior Network Architect, NOS email»
Pedro Antao is Senior IP Engineer at NOS. He has a 20 years' experience in the communications industry in the Mobile Networks. Mobile backhaul engineering has always being a primary job, evolving from the legacy TDM/ATM to allip. Pedro is now a specialist in the evolution of mobile backhaul and synchronization to support LTE-A

Allan Armstrong - CEO, Meinberg USA email»
Allan has worked in engineering, applications, and marketing on timing technology throughout his career including frequency synthesis at HP (now Keysight/Agilent), GPS and Cesium oscillators at HP (now MicroSemi/Symmetricom), timing generator ICs at Vitesse Semiconductor (now MicroSemi), BAW resonators and PLL ICs at Maxim Integrated, and crystals and oscillators at Epson. Allan was born in Whitby, England, earned his BSEE from MIT, and resides in Silicon Valley.

Greg Armstrong - Principle System Architect, Renesas email»
Greg has been working in the Telecommunications industry for 25 years, focusing on synchronization for the last 15 years. Greg’s expertise is in technologies that enable the transfer of frequency, phase and time synchronization over packet networks (SyncE, IEEE 1588, NTP, ToP, RTP and CESoPSN). As a Principal System Architect at Renesas Electronics (who acquired Integrated Device Technology (IDT) in 2019), he is responsible for the technical definition of new timing products (both silicon and software) around network synchronization.Greg has been advising System Architects and Design Engineers at industry-leading companies on network synchronization for many years. He has presented papers at various conferences and, since 2016, he has been providing a tutorial on Phase Locked Loops (PLLs) at both ITSF and WSTS. He also represents Renesas in the IEEE 1588 working group and was a key contributor to the CableLabs Synchronization Techniques for DOCSIS® Technology Specification for Mobile Backhaul..

Douglas Arnold - Principal Technologist, Meinberg-USA email»
Douglas is currently co-chair of the IEEE Working Group and co-chair of the ISPCS PTP Plugfest Organizing Committee. He has spent twenty years working on precise timing technology. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinios.

Guy Buesnel - Technical Marketing Engineer, Spirent Communications email»
Guy has more than 16 years' experience in protecting GNSS Receivers from emerging threats, having started his career as a Systems Engineer involved in the development of GPS Adaptive Antenna Systems at Raytheon Systems Limited in the UK. Guy joined Spirent in May 2014 as Market Segment Leader - Robust Positioning Navigation and Timing. Guy holds an MSc (Eng) in Communications Engineering from the University of Birmingham and a BSc (Hons) in Physics with Atmospheric Physics from the University of Wales Aberytstwyth. Guy is a Chartered Physicist, a Member of the Institute of Physics and was elected a Fellow of The Royal Institute of Navigation in 2015 in recognition of his contributions to the field of GNSS vulnerabilities

Bob Cockshott - Director, Location & Timing Programme, Digital Systems KTN/NPL email»
Bob is PNT Lead in Innovate UK's Knowledge Transfer Network, which facilitates knowledge exchange to promote economic growth. Bob has specialised knowledge transfer in positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) for over 8 years, and has organised events on many aspects of PNT, including internationally renowned conferences on GNSS vulnerability. Before working in knowledge transfer, Bob spent many years as a systems engineer and project manager in the space industry, developing electro-optical and RF payload instrumentation.

Tommy Cook - CEO Calnex email»
Tommy is the Founder and CEO of Calnex Solutions and has over 35 years' experience in the Telecoms Industry. His experience has been in telecoms test and measurement having been employed by Hewlett Packard and Agilent Technologies before starting Calnex. Tommy has participated in a number of Standards forums over his career, including ITU-T Study Group 15 & the MEF to participant in the discussions on Timing-over-Packet solutions. Tommy holds a Master of Science degree in Digital Techniques from Herriot-Watt University, Edinburgh and a Bachelor of Science degree with Honours in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Paisley University.

Lee Cosart – Senior Technologist, Microchip email»
A graduate of Stanford University, Lee worked as an R&D engineer at Hewlett-Packard/Agilent and Symmetricom prior to joining Microsemi in 2013. His R&D activities have included measurement algorithm development and mathematical analysis for a variety of test equipment for which he holds several patents. He serves on, as chair, contributor and editor, the ATIS and ITU-T committees responsible for network synchronization standardization. His TimeMonitor software is used to collect and analyze synchronization and packet timing measurement data and has been used in laboratories and live operating networks throughout the world.

Tony Flavin - MIET, Manager - Strategic Research, Chronos Technology email»
Tony joined the Post Office Research department (later to become BT) as an apprentice in 1974 and started his career in electronic and semiconductor design for early digital transmission systems. Later he helped develop the first optical fibre networks, before specialising in SDH and network synchronisation. He represented BT’s interests globally at ETSI and ITU for SDH and OTN/DWDM transport systems and gained experience across network design, procure, test, development and rollout. In the later years he was responsible for BT’s timing platforms supporting frequency time and phase across all of its platform domains. At Chronos Tony is responsible for strategic research, technical support within the research projects and helping new products to emerge into the marketplace.

Tim Frost BSc, MSc, MIET, C.Eng – Strategic Technology Manager, Calnex Solutions Ltd. email»
Tim joined Calnex in the summer of 2013. He has several years of experience in next-generation synchronisation techniques, having worked with both Symmetricom and Zarlink Semiconductor on packet synchronisation technologies. He has been active in the ITU Network Synchronisation question (Q13/SG15), the Small Cell Forum, where he was editor for their Synchronisation white paper, and also in the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), where he was the editor for their circuit emulation standards. Tim has over 20 years experience in the electronics and telecommunications industry, having worked in areas such as the design of embedded CPU cores for ASIC devices, and in railway signaling systems. Tim has a BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Leeds, and an MSc. from the University of Manchester. He is a Member of the IET and a Chartered Engineer.

Mike Gilson, BA (Hons), MIET - Technology Specialist, BT email»
Has played a major role in developing and implementing BT's synchronisation and timing strategy from 1988 to present day. He has represented BT on various national and international working groups and standards committees (including ETSI, ITU, PNOIG, IETF) and is currently actively contributing to ITU-T SG15 (Transport Networks, Systems & Equipment) on the synchronisation question (Q13).

Jorg Hahn - Head of Gaileo System Procurement, European Space Agency email»
Jorg studied radiophysics and electronics at the Belorusian State University in Minsk and graduated in 1993 with a MSc degree in physics and mathematics. He was then scientific collaborator in the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen working on timing aspects for future satellite navigation systems. He subsequently obtained a Dr.-Ing degree in engineering sciences from the University FAF in Munich-Neubiberg. Jorg joined the European Space Agency (ESA / ESTEC) Galileo Project Office as System Engineer in 2000 with Galileo system timing, system performance and general system engineering. He manages a team of ESA engineers supported by system support contracts with major European space industries.

Kenneth Hann - CEO Time4 Systems email»
Kenneth is Senior Director R&D for Oscilloquartz, Finland. He was founder and CEO of Time4 Systems with 30 years’ experience in telecommunications from Nokia, Martis and Tellabs. For the past decade Kenneth has focused on innovative synchronisation solutions for packet networks and has been actively involved in the development of standardisation for both synchronous Ethernet, and IEEE 1588. Kenneth has a number of synchronisation related patents and a Master’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Queens University Belfast.

Helmut Imlau, Dipl.-Ing. - Timing & Synchronisation, Deutsche Telekom email»
Has 20 years experience in the field of transport networks along with specific synchronisation and measurement issues. Since 2002 Helmut has been responsible for synchronisation systems within Deutsche Telekom's fixed network. His current focus is on Deutsche Telekom's future synchronization strategy as well as phase synchronization for mobile base stations. He is active in standardisation with main focus on ITU-T SG15 (Transport Networks, Systems & Equipment) on the synchronisation question (Q13).

Martin Kingston - Principal Designer for Mobile Backhaul at EE;email»
Martin has over 20 years experience in communications, amassing a broad knowledge of fixed, mobile and internet services combined with a deep understanding of transmission and transport technologies. He began working on terrestrial and satellite communication systems for outside broadcasts at the BBC before moving to Orange UK were he gained extensive experience of synchronisation in mobile networks and evolution to next generation transport network architectures in a converged mobile, home and business service provider. Martin is currently working with a team of Senior Designers developing design strategy and solutions for packet transport networks to support the next generation of radio access technologies.

Ullas Kumar - Applications Manager, Rakon email»
Ullas is Telecom Systems Engineer with the Business Development Team in Rakon, Singapore. Prior to joining Rakon, he was working in the telecom synchronisation domain for the last 17 years working on traditional and packet synchronisation techniques. He has presented papers on various forums and published technical articles. He represents Rakon at various standardisation bodies.He holds Masters degree in Electronics Design and Technology (Telecom) from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India and Master of Business Administration degree from National University of Singapore.

Michael Mayer, B.Sc. - Advisor Network Standards, Huawei email»
Michael is a graduate of Queen's University (Kingston, Canada). He is currently employed with Ciena Corporation and is involved with research and development related to transport systems design and standardization. Prior to this, he was employed by Bell-Northern Research and Nortel. Since 1998, the focus of his standardization work as been with the ITU-T, contributing to diverse topics such as synchronization, SDH, OTN and control plane architecture. He is currently involved with ITU-T Question 13 and is the editor of several recommendations related to packet network synchronization.

Andrew Miles - Technical Marketing Manager, Blu Wireless Technology email»
Andrew’s experience encompasses RF, telecommunications, semiconductors, crystal oscillators, GNSS and mm-wave backhaul in design, project management, product management and marketing roles at Nortel, Symbionics, SiGe Semiconductor, Rakon, u-blox and Blu Wireless Technology. He is a graduate of Durham University.

Paolo Novellini - Principal Engineer Xilinx email»
Paolo is working as RF IO Specialist, supporting strategic accounts in EMEA. Previously, Paolo worked for Alcatel-Lucent and for Infineon Technologies. His main areas of interest include burst data recovery circuits, network timing synchronization, oversampling techniques and low latency transmission architectures. Paolo has a Master’s Degree in Microelectronics from Politecnico di Milano and holds 15 granted patents.

Cesar Prados - CTO/CEO, Melior Systems email»
Cesar started his Engineer career 13 years ago at I.D.S Space Laboratory, Italy, developing numerical methods and in parallel he continued working on research projects at University. Cesar won first prize in the Innovative Entrepreneurial Projects Contest and founded a spin-off in 2007. In 2009 he started working in GSI, Germany, as a Timing Engineer and later as a Technical Project Manager of the Control & Timing System. He has designed and developed HW/SW for the new control and timing system based on White Rabbit technology. Alongside, he has been studying how to increase the reliability and robustness of high accuracy systems. As timing network architect, he has designed, deployed and operated several high accuracy mid-size timing networks within GSI campus. These networks are used to steer and control the accelerator and experiments. Besides he has planned and designed the next high accuracy timing network for the new FAIR accelerator. During 2017 he introduced the White Rabbit technology to Frankfurt Stock Exchange and helped them to evaluate the advantages of sub-nanosecond timing for trading diagnostic in their campus. Since Feb 2018 Cesar is the CTO and MD of Seven Solutions bringing high accuracy sync into new ecosystems and markets.

Andy Proctor, FRIN, FIET - UK Cabinet Office PNT Technical Lead/Innovation Lead for PNT at InnovateUK email»
Andy is the Innovation Lead for PNT at the UK's Innovation Agency, Innovate UK, also the Cabinet Office PNT Technical Lead. He also represents the UK as the lead delegate to the European Space Agency (ESA) Programme Board for Navigation (PBNAV), leading the UK involvement in the NAVISP Programme. Andy is the founder of the Cross-government working group on PNT and also sits on the UK Space PNT Committee. Andy has held engineering and business and consultancy positions within a variety of organisations; military, governmental and commercial, both large and small, for over 20 years. He has experience in multiple sectors including Space, Telecommunications, Defence and Automotive, plus has a large amount of international business experience having worked in the USA, Asia and mainland Europe. Andy is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and the Institute of Engineering and Technology.

Silvana Rodrigues –Senior Principal System Engineering, Huawei email»
Silvana graduated in Electrical Engineer from Campinas University, Sao Paulo, Brazil. She started her career at the Telecommunication Research Center in Brazil. She worked at Zarlink (formerly Mitel Semiconductor) where she hold several positions as Analog designer, Engineering Manager and System Architect. She worded as a Director of System Engineering at IDT. She also participates in several standards group, being the Associate Rapporteur for Q13 at ITU, the editor of the ITU-T G.8262, G.8263, G.8272 and G.8273.x Recommendations, and the secretary for the IEEE 1588 standards committee.

Kishan Shenoi - CTO, Qulsar, Inc. email»
Kishan Shenoi received his bachelors, masters, and doctorate degrees from IIT-Delhi, Columbia University, and Stanford University, respectively, in 1972, 1973, and 1977. He is active in Standards bodies and co-chair of the technical committee of NIST-WSTS. He is named on 45 patents and has several publications including two books, Digital Signal Processing in Telecommunications (1995) and Synchronization and Timing in Telecommunications (2009). He is currently CTO of Qulsar, developing fit-for-purpose solutions for timing and synchronization in the fields of communications, power, sensor networks, and the Internet of Things.

Terry Sullivan - Senior Designer, EE email»
Terry originally joined Orange UK in 2001 within the Network Design team and worked extensively on adding capacity to the Orange 3G backhaul and core network before moving on to pseudowire and ethernet based backhaul technologies. Throughout his time at Orange/EE, Terry has worked on synchronisation solutions for both the legacy ATM network and the IP backhaul network, and within his current role is the Design Authority for mobile backhaul synchronisation; designing synchronisation solutions for the packet transport network and RAN elements.

Frédéric Vittrant - Product Line Manager with Rakon email»
Frédéric graduated in 1996 from ISEN engineering school in France and also holds an MSc in Control and information technology from UMIST in Manchester, UK. He has worked for different companies starting with Filtronic Comtek in the UK and Finland designing base station filters. He also designed radio-frequency side of mobile phones with SAGEM and MOTOROLA in France; and 4G RFIC with Renesas Mobile. He later worked as RF product line manager with Zodiac Data Systems (now part of SAFRAN) and held senior management positions there until joining RAKON in 2019.

Dr Marc A. Weiss - Telecom Sync and GPS expert, U.S. NIST email»
Dr Weiss has worked at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology--formerly NBS, the National Bureau of Standards) since 1979. He received the NBS Applied Research Award (with others) for a first GPS timing receiver in 1983. He was awarded a patent (with others) for the Smart Clock algorithm in 1993. Marc founded and has led WSTS, the Workshop on Sync in Telecom Systems, annually since 1992. Dr. Weiss has also led the NIST program to support the GPS program office in developing their clocks and timing systems since 1992, after participating in it since 1980.  He received his Ph.D. in Mathematical-Physics from the University of Colorado in 1981.

Christopher Wilson - Principal Designer, EE email»
Christopher is a Principal Designer working in mobile network provider EE, which is now owned by BT. Chris originally joined Orange UK in 2001 in network planning before moving on to forecasting of fixed broadband during the era of initial unbundling of exchanges. He then moved into Mobile Backhaul Design 7 years ago. Chris was the lead designer for EE's Olympic 2012 backhaul design, and was also the lead designer for EE/3UK rollout and integration of dark fibre network in Hull, UK. Chris has an interest in synchronisation from within his role in the Mobile Backhaul Design team, where the team design packet transport network solutions for all RAN element backhaul to the Core network.

New Members

The Steering Group is always on the look out for new members. Please contact any current member to discuss joining if you feel you can contribute and note our Governance Rules on membership.

Enquiries relating to the steering group should be made to:

Chris Farrow on telephone number +44 (0) 1594 862232 or by e-mail to

Vision

ITSF's Vision

The ITSF vision sees an annual, technically stimulating, four day presentation driven international industry forum and workshop with tutorials (conference).

The conference will focus on developments, techniques, issues, problems, solutions and Standards relating to accurate and traceable synchronisation, time and timing applicable to Telecom, Broadcasting, Finance, Energy, Defence and other related critical infrastructure activity.