About
An engineering consultancy built on rigor, not marketing.
Fourth Quarter Enterprises supports hardware teams building high-speed digital boards for aerospace, defense, space, medical, and industrial control programs - the kind of systems where a marginal eye or an EMC surprise is not an acceptable outcome.
Leadership
A note from the founder
The founder of Fourth Quarter Enterprises holds an electrical engineering degree from The Pennsylvania State University with an emphasis on digital design, and spent the early part of his career at a large U.S. defense contractor working on high-speed digital hardware for mission-critical programs.
Fourth Quarter Enterprises exists because those programs deserve independent signal integrity work - not a datasheet reference design stretched past its assumptions, and not a rushed post-layout check the week before tape-out.
Our work is intentionally narrow: pre-layout channel budgeting, post-layout verification, and power integrity / EMC risk assessment for high-speed digital boards. We build the model, correlate it where hardware exists, write down the margins, and stand behind them. Where a design is out of budget, we say so - in writing - before it costs a respin.
We are engineers, not resellers. Recommendations are made on the physics of the channel and the schedule of the program, not on a vendor relationship.
Technical capabilities
The analysis backbone behind every engagement.
- IBIS-AMI channel simulation and correlation
- 3D full-wave EM extraction of vias, breakouts, and connectors
- S-parameter passivity, causality, and compliance analysis
- PDN target-Z derivation and decoupling optimization
- TDR/VNA measurement plan and lab-correlation reviews
- MIL-STD-461, DO-160, and CISPR emissions-risk assessment
How we work
Four commitments we make to every program.
Simulation with margin
Numbers reported with confidence intervals, worst-case corners, and explicit assumptions - never a single nominal eye.
Small book
A limited number of programs each quarter so each engagement gets senior attention from start to sign-off.
Written deliverables
Reports, project files, and reproducible setups you can hand to primes, program offices, or qualification bodies.
Discretion
Programs are handled under NDA. We do not publish customer names, boards, or measurements without explicit written permission.
Let's scope your program.
The best way to know whether we're the right fit is a short conversation about the interfaces, the mission class, and the schedule.
Request an engagement