Evaluating the IEEE 802.15.4a UWB physical layer for WSN applications

Ultra wideband radio (UWB) is a promising technology that offers exceptional data rates for short range communication. This paper presents the analysis of the IEEE 802.15.4a UWB physical layer (PHY) a novel short range wireless communication technology, for wireless sensor network (WSN) applications. We analysed and compared the performance of the UWB PHY using the MIXIM framework for a discrete event based simulator called OMNeT++. In this context, we present the simulation and implementation of line of sight (LOS) and non line of sight (NLOS) channel models with a variety of configurations such as data rates, bandwidth and forward error correction. An analysis on bit error rate (BER) over distance will be discussed in order to evaluate the channels performance. The results will serve as a base for future studies on deploying IEEE 802.15.4a based sensor networks with specific characteristics.