Advanced features on Bluetooth laser mouse products

IRVINE & SAN JOSE, USA: Broadcom Corp. and Avago Technologies, a leading supplier of analog interface components for communications, industrial and consumer applications, jointly announced a new low-cost reference design platform for building laser mice based on Bluetooth.

The reference design combines Broadcom's Bluetooth silicon and software with Avago's LaserStream mouse sensor technology, reducing the number of required components while simplifying the design process.

The Broadcom/Avago reference design enables manufacturers to build full-featured Bluetooth laser mice at a cost that is substantially less than the cost of existing solutions. Laser mouse products based on this reference design will offer high quality performance, one-click pairing (enabled by Broadcom software) and over six months of battery life -- providing an ideal travel mouse solution for Bluetooth-enabled notebook PCs.

Bluetooth laser mice are increasingly popular because they provide more precise tracking over a variety of surfaces without the hassle of cords or cables. This is especially important for those who use mobile PCs in places where a suitable work surface is not always available. As a result, there is an increasing trend in the PC market for laser wireless mice that can track on many more surfaces than optical mice -- especially for mobile PCs and notebooks. Moreover, PC OEMs are now bundling Bluetooth wireless mice and other peripherals to provide a more complete computing system that interoperates and is optimized for use in today's smaller, faster and feature-rich PCs.

The Bluetooth laser mouse reference design includes a new navigation platform developed by Avago, and offers a wide range of high precision optical sensors that incorporate its LaserStream technology and Broadcom Bluetooth technology. This enables mouse manufacturers to build laser wireless mice with the most accurate control at a fraction of the current cost, as well as to offer low power operation that achieves more than six months of battery life.

The reference design takes advantage of the fact that Bluetooth technology is already found in nearly 40 percent of today's notebooks and has been developed and continually tuned to co-exist with Wi-Fi(R), which also operates in the 2.4 GHz radio frequency, providing a superior user experience than other technologies used in wireless peripherals.

Avago, which pioneered optical sensing for mouse technology, and Broadcom are working with several of the world's leading device manufacturers to bring Bluetooth-enabled laser mice products to market. By leveraging highly integrated components and other cost saving techniques that reduce the overall system cost for PC manufacturers, these partners expect to significantly reduce manufacturing costs. The Bluetooth Laser Mouse reference design is available immediately.