In 1977, Dr John O'Sullivan, while working at the Dwingeloo Radio Observatory in the Netherlands, co-authored a paper in the Journal of the Optical Society of America titled "Image sharpness, Fourier optics, and redundant-spacing interferometry" with J. P. Hamaker, and J. E. Noordam. In this paper, they presented a technique for sharpening and improving picture clarity in radio astronomy images. In the early 1990s, O'Sullivan led a team at the CSIRO which patented, in 1996, the use of a related technique for reducing multipath interference of radio signals transmitted for computer networking. This technology is a part of all recent WiFi implementations. As of April 2012, the CSIRO has earned over $430 million in royalties and settlements arising from the use of this patent as part of the 802.11 standards with as much as a billion dollars expected after further lawsuits against other parties.
2012 The European Inventor Award 2012 awarded by European Patent Office for having "made the wireless LAN as fast and powerful as the cabled solutions of the time, and is the basis for the wireless networking technology now used in billions of devices worldwide."
1999–2001 Vice President Systems Engineering, Radiata Communications
1995–2000 Director Technology, News Ltd
1989–1995 Deputy Chief of Division, CSIRO Radiophysics
1983–1989 Head of Signal Processing Group, CSIRO Radiophysics
1974–1983 Head of Receiver Group, Netherlands Foundation for Radio Astronomy
Research highlights
Achieved an eight-fold increase of the bandwidth processing capacity of the Westerbork Radio Telescope as project leader for the digital continuum backend receiver
Participated in a series of innovative experiments to detect exploding black holes and other short time astronomical events
Developed an intellectual underpinning for adaptive optics in light telescopes and redundant baseline interferometer in radio telescopes
With Austek Microsystems created a fast Fourier transform computer chip. This VLSI chip consisted of 160,000 transistors and performed real time transforms at rates up to 2.5 Msamples/s
Influential role in the system design for the Australia Telescope
Led a CSIRO team comprising Graham Daniels, John Deane, Diethelm Ostry, Terry Percival who together invented a patented technology that uses fast Fourier transform and other techniques to enable fast, robust wireless networking in the home and office
Led the system design for the world's first 802.11a chipset developed by Radiata Networks
Over 40 scientific and technical papers at numerous industry conferences
Granted 12 patents in the area of special purpose FFT processors, Wireless LANs and antennas
