Nearly a billion people use John O’Sullivan’s invention every day.

Credit: Bearcage Productions

SYDNEY: Thirty years after creating the technology that made wireless networks fast and robust, a CSIRO engineer has been rewarded for the discovery with the 2009 Prime Minister's Prize for Science.

The awards, which recognise the accomplishments of Australian scientists and science teachers, are to be handed out this evening, at a black tie event at Parliament House in Canberra.

Spin-off technology

John O'Sullivan, a systems engineer for the CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility in New South Wales, was handed the top award for his contribution to a technology that is now used by nearly one billion people and is found in homes, offices, and coffee shops: the wireless internet connection. (see Profile: John O'Sullivan)

In 1977, O'Sullivan co-wrote a paper about mathematical equations, known as Fourier transforms, to sharpen optical telescope images distorted by the atmosphere. At the time, he was searching for faint radio whispers of exploding black holes.

Although he never managed to do so, the techniques he and his colleagues developed to clean up intergalactic radio wave distortion helped conceive wireless local area networks (LAN).

"While you're trying to meet these difficult challenges, very often you end up solving problems that have much wider applications. The wireless LAN is a glorious example," O'Sullivan said. "I hope [the award is] something that will encourage others to follow the same path I have."

Court battle

The same technology was last year the subject of a U.S. court battle over intellectual property rights, which was decided in the favour of the CSIRO (see "CSIRO wins wireless technology court battle").

O'Sullivan faced a few obstacles along the way, such as radio waves bouncing off surfaces and creating echoes in the transmission, but Ron Ekers, CSIRO Fellow and former Australia Telescope director, said, "He already knew how to approach the problem, and he knew that it would work."

After a decade of industry work, O'Sullivan is back in research mode, currently working on the design of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope, a prototype telescope which is a step towards the full Square Kilometre Array which may be situated in Australia and would be able to look back 13 billion years into the history of the universe.