IEEE 802.15.6: Physical Layer Implementation and Evaluation of Medical Bands for ns-3

IEEE 802.15.6 is a standard for wireless body area networks (WBANs). The purpose of this standard is to establish communication for medical and other wireless short-range devices used around human bodies. Even with considerable research published around WBAN, it remains an area of study that still needs to be explored. For WBAN simulations, it is necessary to perform evaluations as close to real use conditions as possible. In this paper, we present our implementation of the IEEE 802.15.6 standard in the ns-3 network simulator. Our implementation of IEEE 802.15.6 includes only the Physical Layer and captures its essential features, such as the DBPSK modulation scheme and BCH codes. We performed the tests for coded and uncoded bit error probability and analyzed their impact on the network performance. The code for our simulation model is publicly available.