An Improved Mobility Aware Relaying Scheme for Body Area Networks

Communication in Body Area Networks (BANs) involves weak signals, due to safety regulations, huge pathloss from the absorption and usually high mobility. In this work, we introduce an improved mobility aware relaying scheme for BANs, as an alternative to the two-hop star topology extension of IEEE 802.15.6-2012, in order to enhance packet delivery. Specifically, an emergency phase (EP) is added after the regular random access phase (RAP1) of the superframe and the connected nodes transmit rescue beacons to reach disconnected nodes. When a disconnected node receives a rescue beacon, it participates in the current EP. The packets are buffered and relayed to the hub by the connected nodes. Simulation results show that it is feasible to receive more packets compared to the standard with a justified increase of energy consumption due to random access which is compensated with increased packet delivery.