Belkin to Design Cypress's WirelessUSB Technology Into Home Theatre Systems

July 27, 2004

New 2.4 GHz Keyboards, Mice and Remote Controls Will Enable Users to Surf the Internet And Manage PC-Based Media Centers From Their Living Room Couch

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. today announced that Belkin Corp. has selected Cypress’s WirelessUSB™ radio-system-on-a-chip technology for use in a new family of products it is designing for PC-based media center/home theatre applications, including WirelessUSB-based keyboards, mice and remote controls. The first products are expected to appear on store shelves by early September, in time for the year-end holiday shopping season.

"Multimedia PC and home theatre technologies are converging to create a host of opportunities for new types of low-cost wireless peripherals," said Scott Borden, director of Belkin R&D Labs. "We selected WirelessUSB for this application because the technology offers superior range, battery life, and performance versus competing solutions, including 27 MHz and Bluetooth."

"Many people today would like be able to surf the Internet from their living room couch, or download and drive movies and digital programming to home theatre systems via a multimedia PC," said Cathal Phelan, vice president of Cypress’s Personal Communications Division. "WirelessUSB gives designers like Belkin the low-cost, robust performance and flexible architecture they require to make the convenient, new wireless peripherals that will drive these systems."

About WirelessUSB

WirelessUSB, offered by both Cypress and its second-source partner, Atmel Corp. (NASDAQ: ATML), delivers the best combination of performance and cost versus competing wireless technologies. WirelessUSB LS devices communicate at distances of up to 10 meters, with an average latency of less than four milliseconds and a transmission rate of 62.5 kbps. Featuring a highly integrated radio transceiver plus digital baseband on a single chip, the technology, which is priced below $2 in volume quantities, enables designers to significantly decrease development time, component count and system cost while improving operating range, power-consumption and latency.

WirelessUSB devices employ a unique patent-pending approach to avoid electrical interference, that combines bi-directional Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) data transmission techniques, pre-defined pseudo-noise codes and dynamic channel switching to create a frequency-agile solution with excellent processing gain for guaranteed wireless data delivery. Operating in the 2.4 GHz global ISM band, the device also allows customers to deploy their solutions worldwide, regardless of regional frequency requirements. Earlier this year, the company also introduced a 50-meter version of the product, WirelessUSB LR, for long-range commercial and industrial applications.

The original press release can be found here.