An energy efficient discovery algorithm for opportunistic WBAN systems

In this paper, we propose an energy efficient neighbor discovery algorithm for wireless body area network (WBAN) systems to maximize their lifetime. WBAN provides communication services among a personal health server and a set of body sensor nodes. However, the services, in general, are intermittent since these devices can be separate or apart from one´s body. The intermittent connections cause both increasing latency and shortening lifetime problems. To mitigate these problems, we modified the WBAN discovery procedures to find multiple devices within a discovery period. This paper presents simulation results to analyze the relationship between discovery time and lifetime for WBAN devices.