Simulink Modeling of the 802.15.4 Physical Layer for Model-Based Design of Wireless Sensor Networks

802.15.4 was developed to meet the needs for simple, low-power and low-cost wireless communication. In the past couple of years it has become a popular technology for wireless sensor networks. This paper focuses on developing MatLab/Simulink models for the Zigbee protocol that can be used in a model-based design environment to provide opportunities for co-design of the application and the parameters of the communication stack. We provide examples of results relating the signal Bit Error Rate and Packet Reception Rate when varying the data rate, Signal to Noise Ratio, type of modulation, bit per symbol and number of nodes for three different channel models, AWGN, Rician and Rayleigh fading at different K-factor.