On-Body and Off-Body Communications: A Comparative Study Between Hardware and Simulations

The IEEE 802.15.6 standard defines wireless body area networks (WBANs) for communication in, on, and around the human body. However, commercially available hardware platforms that support direct experimental validation of IEEE 802.15.6-oriented WBAN studies remain limited. As a result, much WBAN research still relies on simulations or custom-built transceivers, leaving the practical validity of simulation results uncertain. In this study, we evaluated a configurable radio platform for GMSK-based narrowband WBAN PHY validation in the 420-450 MHz band by comparing theoretical calculations, ns-3 simulation results, and hardware measurements. Evaluations covered both on-body and off-body scenarios at transmit powers from -15 to -25 dBm. Our key findings are as follows: (1) lower transmit power consistently decreases the communication range in both simulated and hardware environments; (2) degradation trends in packet success rate are similar for both environments, supporting simulation credibility; and (3) in the off-body scenario, ns-3 simulations overestimate the communication range by approximately 10 m compared to hardware under identical conditions. The publicly available simulation framework facilitates reproducible WBAN research. Our results confirm that our ns-3 implementation can be used effectively to approximate key GMSK-based WBAN PHY behaviors in realistic conditions while identifying specific differences in range estimates.