Broadcom, Avago Offer Bluetooth Mouse Ref. Design

Broadcom Corp. and Avago Technologies have created a joint, low-cost reference design for building laser mice based on Bluetooth technology. The design combines Broadcom's Bluetooth silicon and software with Avago's LaserStream mouse sensor technology. Using the reference design, manufacturers will be able to build full-featured Bluetooth laser mice more cheaply than with current solutions. Laser mouse products based on this reference design will offer high quality performance, one-click pairing and over six months of battery life. It includes a new Avago navigation platform and offers a range of high precision optical sensors that incorporate LaserStream and Bluetooth technology. Bluetooth technology is found in about 40 percent of today's notebooks and has been developed and continually tuned to co-exist with Wi-Fi, which also operates in the 2.4 GHz radio frequency. Bluetooth laser mice are increasingly popular, especially for mobile PCs and notebooks, because they provide more precise tracking over a variety of surfaces without the hassle of cords or cables. 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. "As the size and form factor of today's PCs continue to shrink, this miniaturization is driving the requirement for peripheral devices such as computer mice, keyboards and other related devices to be smaller and offer more features," Kee-Hane Ngoh, vice president of the navigation products division at Avago, said in a statement. "By sharing our design resources and bringing together Avago's best-in-class LaserStream sensor and Broadcom's Bluetooth solution, our companies have set a new standard for laser mouse functionality and cost."