Blog icon

By  Ashleigh Carraro 8 October 2026 3 min read

Key points

  • A new Royal Australian Mint coin collection Bright Ideas celebrates five Australian inventions that have changed the world, including CSIRO’s high-speed Wireless LAN (WLAN) technology
  • Invented in the 1990s, high-speed WLAN overcame a challenge no other organisation could solve at the time and paved the way for the fast Wi-Fi that is now used worldwide every day
  • The coin’s release in our Centenary year honours the enduring impact of CSIRO science on lives of every day Australians

CSIRO science is world-changing. And you can take that to the bank!

Take wireless connectivity. It’s hard to imagine life these days without it. Every day, people across the world rely on it to work, learn, access services, run businesses and stay connected with family and friends, often without giving it a second thought.

But three decades ago, achieving a fast, reliable wireless connection was a challenge yet to be overcome. Now, our role in solving this obstacle is being featured on a new Australian coin.

The race to be mobile 

The early 1990s were a time of landline phones, public payphones and video rental stores, but it was also the cusp of the internet boom. 

1991 saw the world wide web become publicly available, closely followed by improvements to web browsers and an explosion of internet activity in the years to follow. Simultaneously, bulky portable computers and mobile devices were becoming more common, particularly in business settings.

Companies across the world were trying to develop wireless networking systems that could free devices from their cables, however processing speeds were slow at around one to two megabits per second, and unable to keep up with the data-hungry multimedia applications of computers at the time.

An answer from a different field

It was at this time that a team of five CSIRO researchers working in our Radiophysics Division set an ambitious problem to solve. They wanted to build the world’s first high-performance wireless network, with a data transfer rate of 100 megabits per second, comparable to fibre optic networks of the time. 

However, there was a key obstacle standing in the way - reverberation. Reverberation occurs when radio waves bounce around the surrounding environment such as furniture, causing an echo that distorts the signal, making it difficult to reliably transmit large amounts of data indoors.

Drawing on their expertise in radio astronomy, engineering, and complex mathematics known as 'Fast Fourier transforms' the team developed a novel method to overcome reverberation, culminating in the development of high-speed wireless local area networking, or WLAN. 

CSIRO's WLAN team with the WLAN testbed, May 2012. From left, Terry Percival, John Deane, Diet Ostry, Graham Daniels and John O'Sullivan.

A world-changing breakthrough

It was a significant breakthrough that paved the way for the connected world we know today. The technology ushered in an era of portable devices and by 1997, approximately one quarter of Australian households owned a mobile phone. Fast forward to today, and WLAN technology can be found in more than 20 billion devices worldwide.

Now, the Royal Australian Mint is recognising WLAN technology in its new Bright Ideas coin collection, that celebrates five inventions that have changed the world. 

CSIRO Deputy Chief Executive Elanor Huntington said Wireless LAN technology is a powerful example of research ingenuity in action, and demonstrates the extraordinary impact that Australian science and innovation can have on a global scale. 

“What began as a scientific challenge solved by CSIRO researchers has helped transform how billions of people connect, learn, work and communicate every day.” Elanor said.

“This new Australian coin comes at a particularly meaningful time for CSIRO as we mark our Centenary and reflect on the discoveries that have helped shape industries, communities and everyday lives.”

The networked computer is so basic and so familiar that we take it absolutely for granted. Unfortunately, it means we are all cabledtogether.

Around the world companies have raced to devise wire-lesscommunications systems. But the various commercial systems can send only a trickle of information.

For nearly ten years, a team from CSIRO and Macquarie University have been working to build the world’s first high-performancewireless Local Area Network.

At the time, it was a visionary project. They wanted to increase the amount of information transmitted by more than a factor of 50. It would be needed by developments which were still on the horizon, such as fast laptop computers, and data hungry multi-media applications.

Wireless LANS need to run from a central antenna broadcasting an electromagnetic signal to many indoor computers.

However, the transmitted signals will be reflected off furniture and typical building components and so create a severe multi-path environment where the mobile unit will receive many copies of the message spread out over time.

The team brought fifty years of experience in radio system design, honed through radar and radio astronomy to solve the problem.

They developed and simulated complex signal processing algorithms for overcoming the effects of multipath. These algorithms were then tested using a new radio systems testbed.

This was used to test the system’s performance in a number of “real world” situations, and develop and patent the optimum system design.

Now the challenge was to reduce the size of the whole thing - to fit on a card in a portable computer.

Their sophisticated new chip is licensed to a spin-off company, Radiata Communications which has recently made a commercial arrangement with Cisco Systems to take the technology to the world.

The research is so important and far reaching that their patented technology has been included in the new international standard for high performance Wireless LANs.

It puts Australian research at the forefront in one of the vital parts of the information economy, and demonstrates - once again - that we have the industry and skills to achieve global competitiveness.

Ladies and gentlemen, Dr Terry Percival , Mr Graham Daniels and Professor David Skellern.

A piece of Australian history in your pocket 

Two graphic images side by side. The image on the right has the title 'Check your change' and a coin with images showing various Australian inventions. The second image has a coin showing a computer and an image of what looks like a computer.
Wireless local area network (WLAN) technology is relied on every day the world over and now recognised in the Royal Australian Mint's Bright Ideas featuring five of Australia’s best-known inventions.

The Royal Australian Mint's Bright Ideas coin collection is available now and can be purchased via the Royal Australia Mint Shop or at participating NewsXpress outlets. 

A special $2 Bright Ideas till coin will be also become available in circulation, so keep an eye on your change – you might just find a piece of Australian history.

Discover the story behind one of our most influential breakthroughs