US Patent 7800585 Method of operating an optical mouse

A method for operating a hand held optical pointing device, such as an optical mouse, involves capturing a plurality of arrays of data in a hand held optical pointing device representing light reflected from irregularities on a surface, processing at least some of the plurality of arrays of data in the device to estimate movement of the device with respect to the surface during each of a plurality of measurement cycles, and sending a series of estimated movement update signals to a computer, each such estimated movement update signal representing the estimated relative movement of the handheld optical pointing device with respect to the surface during more than one of the plurality of measurement cycles.