A vehicular battery management system (BMS) comprises a battery controller, a set of battery cells, a primary network node coupled to the battery controller, and a secondary network node coupled to the set of battery cells. The primary and secondary network nodes are configured to wirelessly communicate with each other using frames that share a common frame format. The frame format includes one or more bits and a status of the one or more bits indicates whether the secondary network node is to communicate with the primary network node on behalf of another secondary network node.