Performance Evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4 Receiver in the Presence of Broadband Impulsive Noise

A physical layer simulation of an IEEE 802.15.4TM transceiver is developed in accordance with the specifications detailed in the IEEE standard. The simulator is validated by comparing the bit-error-ratio (BER) versus signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) curve found from simulation with that expected from theory. A broadband non-Gaussian impulsive noise model described by a symmetric α-stable (SαS) distribution is designed and used to assess robustness of the IEEE 802.15.4 receiver to impulsive noise.