Dr Stephen Henthorn

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Lecturer in Wireless Communications

Head and shoulders photo of Stephen Henthorne from EEE
Profile picture of Head and shoulders photo of Stephen Henthorne from EEE
s.henthorn@sheffield.ac.uk

Full contact details

Dr Stephen Henthorn
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Profile

I received my MEng and PhD degrees from the University of Sheffield in 2015 and 2019, respectively. During my PhD I investigated how metamaterials can be used to produce low cost, energy efficient transmitters for wireless communications, and explored suitable modulation formats and waveforms for this new class of transmitters. I was then a Research Associate also at Sheffield in the Electronic and Electrical Engineering department, where I worked on direct RF sampling receivers for low footprint energy efficient receivers.


From spring 2020 I have been an Academic Fellow, with responsibilities for teaching and research. I supervise undergraduate and postgraduate research projects on wireless communications and electromagnetics, and lecture on electromagnetic compatibility, where I aim to enable students to consider how the systems they design in the future may impact on other equipment in their environment.

My research is primarily focussed on energy efficient communications. This is becoming increasingly important as mobile communications expands, with power consumption of networks rising sharply with the introduction of 5G. I am particularly interested in applying newly mature and emerging electromagnetic technologies, such as metamaterials, in wireless transceivers and mobile networks. This is now an expanding topic in research for 6G mobile, where the ability of metasurfaces to manipulate signals offers new ways of designing communications systems by controlling the propagation environment. These techniques are often referred to as Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces (IRS) or Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS).

I am also available to take, or assist in taking, a variety of microwave measurements, including radiation patterns and reflection parameters, as well as system-level measurements such as error vector magnitude and error rates where appropriate.

Qualifications

PhD (Electronic Engineering, University of Sheffield) 2019

MEng  (Electronic Engineering with Communications, University of Sheffield) 2015

Research interests

Directly modulating antennas

Reconfigurable metasurfaces and antennas

Intelligent reflecting surfaces/Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces

Energy efficient wireless transceivers

Intelligent reconfigurable surfaces for wireless communications

Modulation techniques and waveforms

Publications

Journal articles

Conference proceedings papers

Datasets

Professional activities and memberships

ECR co-lead of Wireless and Microwave Special Interest Group, EPSRC UK Metamaterials Network