Did Australia invent Wi-Fi?
Australian scientists at CSIRO developed and patented a key technology that made fast wireless networking possible, now used in Wi-Fi. The team, led by John O'Sullivan, filed the patent in the 1990s.
The research grew out of CSIRO's work in radio astronomy. In the 1970s and 1980s, O'Sullivan had worked on ways to detect faint radio signals from exploding black holes, using mathematics called fast Fourier transforms.
In the early 1990s, his team, including Terry Percival, Diet Ostry, Graham Daniels and John Deane, applied similar ideas to a practical problem: indoor radio signals bouncing off walls and furniture and arriving at slightly different times, which blurred the data.
The patent
Their solution allowed data to be sent quickly and reliably through these echoes. CSIRO patented the invention, and it became part of the IEEE 802.11a and later Wi-Fi standards.
CSIRO later took legal action against major technology companies that used the technology without licences. Settlements reached by 2012 earned CSIRO more than 400 million dollars.
Wi-Fi was developed by many people and organisations around the world, but CSIRO's patent was an important part of the story. The team received the European Inventor Award in 2012.
Did You Know?
CSIRO is the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia's national science agency.