Video game and entertainment systems are increasingly incorporating wireless features and accessories. Development of the wireless radios and the necessary drivers require significant design effort. In turn, the commands and protocols required to control and manage the wireless interfaces can be complicated and require significant development resources for developers of software and hardware accessories for the wireless systems. Furthermore, wireless technologies and related standards change on a frequent basis, requiring developers to adapt to new interface requirements. Thus a developer's investment in developing products for a particular wireless interface may not be recouped when the interfaces and protocols frequently change.
Nevertheless, it would be advantageous to use an existing standard interface developing wireless features and accessories. An interface standard widely used in the industry and supported by a large number of products typically drive down costs, and incorporation of such off the shelf components is desirable to reduce the cost of product development. Furthermore, in the case of a wireless transceiver, it is typically desirable to limit the number of IC pins needed to support inter-processor communications, while at the same time providing sufficient data bandwidth. Therefore, a simple serial interface may be selected for a wireless architecture. One such standard interface commonly used and well known in the art that provides such features is the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). One limitation of the SPI interfaces is that data transfers are limited to 8 bits at one time. Because many applications may require higher command and data transfer capability, a higher level protocol is needed that has the advantages of a serial interface. Furthermore, it would advantageous to provide an interface that developers can use to utilize the wireless features, while not having to be concerned with the physical and transport details of the interface.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds