In Search of the Lost Nodes in BANs

Communication in Body Area Networks (BANs) involves extremely weak signals because of safety regulations. Human mobility adds one more layer of complexity as it has an effect on path loss depending on the activity. In this paper, we improve the quality of service (QoS) by searching for the lost nodes. Specifically, an Emergency Phase (EP) is added after RAP1 of IEEE 802.15.6-2012 superframe. The connected nodes transmit rescue beacons to reach distressed nodes, i.e. nodes that are disconnected. If a distressed node receives a rescue beacon, it participates in the current EP. The packets are buffered and relayed to the hub by the connected nodes. Our results show that when EP is enabled it is feasible to reach more nodes.