novelslam Chapter 49 Sprint
Chapter 49 Sprint
Three days after the kick-off meeting, Zuo Cheng broke down the development task list into seventeen sub-tasks, which he then covered the entire whiteboard in his office.
"Ninety days." He stood in front of the whiteboard and said to the entire team, "The first batch of core modules to be delivered consists of two parts—a multi-satellite parallel signal processing engine and a spectrum-aware management system. The architecture design and prototype verification will be completed within ninety days, followed by six months of engineering development. There is no flexibility in the timeline."
Fang Ze looked at the densely packed task cards on the whiteboard, adjusted his glasses, and said, "Seventeen sub-tasks, ten people. But there are dependencies between the tasks; if a module on the critical path is delayed, all subsequent modules will be delayed accordingly."
"Therefore, Tang Xu and I will personally oversee the critical path." Zuo Cheng circled four tasks in red pen—Multi-Star Pipeline Scheduler, Adaptive Parameter Sharing Engine, Beam Coordination Controller, and Spectrum Sensing Front-End. "These four are the core of the core."
Tang Xu stared at the task card of the beam coordination controller for a while: "I have an idea for beam coordination—using the beamforming theory of phased arrays for coordinated scheduling between terminals, which is an order of magnitude more efficient than the traditional table lookup method. But it requires a lot of simulation verification."
"I'll set up the simulation environment," Fang Ze said. "We just upgraded the platform last week, and it now supports 120-channel parallel simulation."
Zuo Cheng nodded. The team's collaboration was much better than it had been six months ago—everyone knew what they were supposed to do and what others were doing.
After assigning tasks, he didn't start writing code immediately. Instead, he returned to his workstation and opened another document.
The Internet of Everything.
The countdown to the side quest on the screen is less than thirty days away—the 180-day deadline, which began last July, ends at the end of January. The task requires completing three IoT commercial projects and developing a reusable technical solution.
Current progress: The IoT communication module and the Ruilian sensor protocol have been delivered. Two are complete; one more is needed.
Just as he was looking through the list, his phone rang. It was Zhao Kai.
"Zuocheng, there's an urgent job. Are you interested?"
"explain."
"We at Ruilian have a smart agriculture project for the China Academy of Agricultural Sciences. A soil sensor network is being deployed across 3,000 mu (approximately 200 hectares) of experimental fields to collect real-time data on temperature, humidity, pH levels, and nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium content, which is then transmitted back to the cloud. We've got the sensor hardware sorted out, but we're facing a problem with the data transmission—the experimental fields are in the suburbs, lacking stable network coverage; both WiFi and 4G are unreliable."
"You need a low-power wide-area network (WAN) solution."
"Yes! We tried LoRa, and the coverage was sufficient, but when hundreds of sensors reported data simultaneously, channel collisions were severe, resulting in an absurd packet loss rate. We were deeply impressed by the protocol optimizations you did for us before, and we'd like to ask you to resolve the channel collision issue this time."
"What about time?"
"The client requires deployment and integration testing to be completed by mid-March, leaving approximately six weeks for the communication solution. The budget is 120,000."
Six weeks. Just right on the deadline for the Internet of Things.
Zuocheng's rapid assessment—the essence of LoRa channel collisions is a collision problem caused by random access from multiple nodes, requiring the design of intelligent time slot allocation and adaptive backoff algorithms. Technically, it's not particularly difficult, but verifying it in a real-world environment with hundreds of nodes is a significant undertaking.
"I accept. The conditions are: 402 owns the intellectual property rights to the LoRa smart access protocol developed by 402, and Ruilian obtains a perpetual license to use it."
Zhao Kai didn't hesitate: "Deal."
"Starting tomorrow."
After hanging up the phone, he wrote "Smart Agriculture - LoRa Channel Optimization" in a newly opened area on the whiteboard.
Zhang Lei glanced over as he passed by and said, "Brother Cheng, Sky Dome hasn't even started work yet, and you've already taken on a new project?"
"The critical path for the Sky Dome project needs Tang Xu's simulation data, and Fang Ze will need three more days to set up the environment. The window of opportunity is perfect for launching LoRa." Zuo Cheng didn't look up. "Liu Wei only needs to lead two new people for this project."
He turned to Liu Wei: "Are you familiar with the LoRa physical layer?"
"My graduation project was on LoRa spread spectrum."
"Okay, you'll handle the engineering implementation, and I'll provide the algorithm solution. I'll give it to you within three days."
After assigning tasks, Zuo Cheng went directly to the school library.
He needed to quietly consider a problem—LoRa channel conflict, IoT communication modules, and sensor protocol optimization. These three projects share a common underlying logic: all aiming to solve the problem of multi-node communication reliability in resource-constrained environments. By abstracting and refining the solutions from these three projects, a universal "IoT smart access protocol stack" can be derived.
This is precisely the "reusable technical solution" required for the task of connecting everything.
He sat for four hours, drawing seven pages of drafts, summarizing the common technologies into four core modules: adaptive channel assessment, intelligent time slot allocation, collision avoidance and retransmission, and low-power sleep/wake-up. These four modules combine to form a complete protocol stack that can run on LoRa, NB-IoT, and even be ported to any future low-power communication standard.
Zuo Cheng looked at the architectural diagram on the draft paper and felt a familiar excitement—the excitement of connecting scattered points into lines and weaving lines into surfaces.
He left the library at nine o'clock in the evening and called Yu Ying.
"Kongkong, have you eaten?"
"I've eaten. What about you?"
"not yet."
"...Did you forget to eat again?"
"I didn't forget, it's just that I didn't have time. I just spent four hours drawing the architecture in the library."
"Drawing architecture diagrams again." Yu Ying sighed. "Your stomach will be ruined by these diagrams sooner or later. Come here, I have some leftover lunch from my advisor's lunchbox today."
It took Zuo Cheng fifteen minutes to cycle to Lanxing University. Yu Ying was waiting for him at the entrance of the laboratory building, holding an insulated bag in her hand.
"Here you go. Braised beef rice."
He took it and leaned against the railing to eat. The February night wind was cool, but the boxed lunch was hot.
Yu Ying stood beside him watching him eat, then suddenly asked, "Brother, how many lines are you running at the same time lately?"
"Three. Sky Dome Phase II, LoRa optimization, protocol stack."
"What about adding an engineering doctoral research topic?"
"Four."
Yu Ying remained silent for a few seconds.
"I won't say anything pointless like 'you're working too hard,' because you wouldn't stop anyway." Her voice was soft but clear. "I'll only say one thing—eat at least three meals a day. If you can't, I'll bring you food every day."
Zuo Cheng glanced at her. Under the streetlight, his scarf was wrapped around his nose, revealing only a pair of serious eyes.
"It's possible."
"That's good." Yu Ying pulled down her scarf, revealing a smile. "Give me back the insulated bag, Professor Li's."
He finished his meal and handed the insulated bag back. Yu Ying took it and turned to leave, but after a few steps, she turned back: "By the way, I'm currently working on low-orbit satellite anti-interference simulations and would like to refer to the actual measurement data from your Sky Dome Phase I project. Could you help me ask Blue Bay if they can share the anonymized data?"
"I'll ask Lu Mingyuan," Zuo Cheng said. "There's a high probability—the anonymized data doesn't involve confidentiality clauses, and Blue Bay has always encouraged universities to use Sky Dome data for research, which is an academic endorsement for them."
"Thanks, bro."
Yu Ying pushed open the door and entered the laboratory building.
On his way back to the company, Zuo Cheng had three things on his mind at the same time: the convergence conditions of the LoRa backoff algorithm, the layered interface of the protocol stack, and the simulation parameters he needed to work out with Fang Ze tomorrow.
Busy, but not chaotic.
Each line points to a clear goal. The celestial dome points to the main line, LoRa points to the branch line, and the protocol stack points to the technological foundation. The three lines operate in parallel, much like the multi-star parallel architecture he designed—each independent yet sharing the underlying logic.
I got back to the office at 10:30. I spent two hours writing the LoRa backoff algorithm solution and sending it to Liu Wei, and one hour organizing the initial draft of the protocol stack architecture.
At 1:30 a.m., I saved the files and shut down the computer.
He glanced at the whiteboard—seventeen Celestial Tasks, one LoRa project, and a draft protocol stack.
Ninety days. That's enough.