WiMedia Alliance notes Japan's regulatory move, USB advances: It's not enormous news, but it's part of the ongoing process in which the WiMedia Alliance, anchored by Intel, will be releasing their ultrawideband (UWB) systems worldwide to work as physical layer replacements for USB, TCP/IP, and 1394 (FireWire) among other standards.
Japan hasn't approved UWB, but will establish a UWB policy, which is a good step towards allowing it. There are many other countries and international bodies still working on finalizing their approach to UWB's broad use of spectrum at extremely low power.
The work on Wireless USB continues with an interoperability lab announcement and a PCI-based technology approach. The Wireless Host Controller Interface (WHCI) lets software and hardware developers work independently and simultaneously towards a common set of interaction, speeding release.
These announcements came out of the Tokyo Wireless USB Developers Conference at which, ExtremeUWB reports, an association security model draft was produced as well. As with Wi-Fi association, UWB devices will have to agree to talk with each other. Everyone has been hoping the approach is not like the awkward Bluetooth dance (which the Bluetooth SIG is trying to improve, too).
A few months ago, WiMedia competitor Freescale told me that they will have three methods of association: paired adapters, buttons on devices which will initiate association, and, eventually, near-field association. Only the paired adapters involve out-of-band association.
The Wireless USB spec has eschewed all three approaches. They will offer an out-of-band wired USB connection as a one-time association pairing method, and a numeric method similar to Bluetooth's passphrase pairing.