News and New Products

Silicon Wave Uses Widcomm’s Bluetooth Software

Staff -- Electronic News, 8/6/2002

Widcomm Inc. today said its BTW Bluetooth communication software is now available for Silicon Wave Inc.’s dual-mode PCI card reference design that features Blue802 technology.

Silicon Wave has licensed Widcomm’s software to offer a Bluetooth Specification Version 1.1-qualified hardware and software product that will be used for integrating both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless technologies into PCs and peripherals. Widcomm’s BTW software solution, which uses Silicon Wave’s Bluetooth chipsets, is also available to PC OEMs who want to add only Bluetooth wireless functionality to their products, the San Diego-based companies said.

BTW, which enables Bluetooth wireless technology in PCs, supports several operating systems, including Windows 98SE, Windows Me, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Silicon Wave’s dual-mode reference design uses Blue802 technology, which allows simultaneous operation of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless functionality in PCs. This enables PC-based Bluetooth applications such as mouse, keyboard, printing, file transfer and portable device synchronization to run at the same time the PC user is connected to a network over Wi-Fi.

The reference design allows both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios to share the same PCB, host interface and antennas, saving integration and material costs, the company said. Using Silicon Wave’s Bluetooth-qualified SiW1700 series and Intersil’s Prism 3 WLAN chipsets featuring direct conversion technology, the reference design is optimized for low cost and high performance, Silicon Wave said.