EchoWerk’s Principal Engineer, Dion Kriel, is a senior systems engineer with over 3 decades of extensive leadership and hands-on experience on almost all levels and phases of embedded systems R&D. Projects and products range from underwater acoustics and sonar systems to avionics and satellite communications. Market sectors include Aerospace & Defense, Aviation, Marine and Ocean Sciences, and Industrial.
Dion Kriel has a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and he has worked in Canada, USA, South Africa, and a year in Antarctica.
SKYTRAC Systems (Kelowna, BC, Canada)
As Hardware Lead and Senior Electronic Engineer at SKYTRAC, Dion served as architect and developer of many avionics products for Iridium satellite communications, automated flight following, and FDM/FOQA flight data acquisition and FDR data recording. Products include the ISAT-200A, CHM Lightweight Flight Data Recorder, and the EuroAvionics EuroNav RN7 Satcom Module.
EdgeTech (Boca Raton, FL, USA)
Dion developed a wide variety of embedded systems and DSP hardware and software for EdgeTech’s sonar systems, and played a key role in creating EdgeTech’s first rugged portable topside unit. He also managed STTR Phases I & II for an Office of Naval Research grant to develop a broadband underwater acoustic modem for shallow water operation with Florida Atlantic University as academic partner.
Triscend Corporation (Mountain View, CA, USA)
As Senior Firmware Engineer, Dion Kriel developed and maintained the debugger and JTAG drivers for Triscend’s TA7 Configurable System on Chip (CSoC) toolchain. Activities included integrating Triscend’s drivers with 3rd-party GUIs and JTAG servers, developing boot code for the TA7 CSoC and embedded firmware drivers for Triscend’s “FastChip” software development suite.
Kongsberg Mesotech (Port Coquitlam, BC, Canada)
At Mesotech, Dion defined the company’s original digital telemetry standard, and developed the embedded hardware and software to create Mesotech’s digital telemetry scanning sonar product line. He also architected and developed the embedded DSP software for Mesotech’s SM2000 first multibeam sonar, and guided the development for its custom video overlay hardware.
MacDonald Dettwiler (Richmond, BC, Canada)
Dion Kriel was the Team Lead responsible for developing the DSP software for an airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system. Activities included analysis and mapping of the SAR algorithm to custom DSP hardware and software modules, designing the high level DSP software architecture, managing the DSP team, and hands-on assembler programming to speed up critical algorithms.
UEC Projects (Mount Edgecombe, South Africa)
Dion developed a passive multibeam sonar with auto-tracking capability for the South African Navy’s submarine sonar suite. He also developed an underwater acoustic signature simulator subsystem for a tactical submarine simulator/trainer system. Both projects involved feasibility studies, critical timing and performance analysis, requirements definition, and mapping system blocks and algorithms to parallel processing software & hardware modules, as well as hands-on development of embedded DSP hardware & software.
SANAE – South African National Antarctic Expedition (SANAE Base, Antarctica)
Dion Kriel spent 14 months on ice as scientific member of the SANAE 24 team, where he was responsible for Rhodes University’s Antarctic program. Duties included collection and analysis of ionospheric data, maintaining and repairing scientific electronic equipment in severe conditions, and performing general Antarctic base duties.
