Hybrid body area network with integrated sensing and communication for AIoT smart healthcare✩

Chao Ren; Ziyun Peng; Chao Gong; Haojin Li; Chen Sun; Jiahao Huo; Lei Sun; Xianmei Wang

doi:10.1016/j.dcan.2026.03.016

›› 2026, Vol. 12 ›› Issue (5) :776 -788. DOI: 10.1016/j.dcan.2026.03.016

research-article

Hybrid body area network with integrated sensing and communication for AIoT smart healthcare^✩

Chao Ren ^a^,^b^,^c^,^*
, Ziyun Peng ^a^,^b^,^c
, Chao Gong ^a^,^b^,^c
, Haojin Li ^d
, Chen Sun ^d
, Jiahao Huo ^a^,^b^,^c
, Lei Sun ^e
, Xianmei Wang ^a^,^b^,^c

Author information +

^a School of Computer and Communication Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing , 100083, Beijing, China

^bHebei Key Laboratory of Space—Air—Ground Intelligent Communication, 100083, Beijing, China

^c Beijing Engineering and Technology Research Center for Convergence Networks and Ubiquitous Services , 100083, Beijing, China

^d Research & Development Center Sony (China) Limited , 100027, Beijing, China

^e School of Automation and Electrical Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing , 100083, Beijing, China

^* E-mail addresses: chaoren@ustb.edu.cn (C. Ren),

13560985819@163.com (Z. Peng),

18510387988@163.com (C. Gong),

Haojin.Li@sony.com (H. Li),

Chen.Sun@sony.com (C. Sun),

huojiahao@ustb.edu.cn (J. Huo),

sun_lei@ustb.edu.cn (L. Sun),

plum-wang@tom.com (X. Wang).

Chao Ren is an Associate Professor and Deputy Director with the University of Science and Technology in Beijing, China. He serves as an Editorial Board Member for Journal of Xi’an University of Posts and Telecommunications, Journal of Communications and Frontiers in Computer Science, recognized with an Outstanding Editor Award. He has been Guest Editor for Space-Integrated-Ground Information Networks and Information Security Research, Chair of the CCAI2025-2026, Co-Chair of the UCOM 2023-2026 Workshop, and Technical Program Committee Members for over 30 international conferences in communications.

Ziyun Peng is currently pursuing her undergraduate studies in Communication Engineering at the University of Science and Technology Beijing. Her research interests include wireless communications, computing power networks, and cloud-edge-end intelligent collaborative computing.

Chao Gong received the bachelor’s degree in communication engineering from the University of Science and Technology Beijing in 2024. His research interests include wireless communications, integrated sensing and communication, and UAV with wireless communication networks.

Haojin Li received an M.S. degree in information and communication engineering from the University of China Academy of Telecommunication Technology, Beijing, China, in 2020. He joined Sony China Research Laboratory in 2020 as a 5G researcher, and since then has been responsible for Sony Group Corporation 5G system level simulator development; in June 2022, he was promoted to Deputy Principal Research and Development Researcher. He is currently working toward a Ph.D. degree in Electronics Information with the School of Computer and Communication Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China. He is currently a Deputy Director of Sony and USTB Joint Laboratory. His research interests include integrated sensing and communication and non-terrestrial networks.

Chen Sun received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Southeast University, Nanjing, China, in 2018. From September 2015 to August 2016, he was a Visiting Student with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Davis, USA. He is currently an Associate Professor with the National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University. His research interests include communications, and information theory, with emphasis on massive MIMO communications, and optical wireless communications.

Jiahao Huo received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Science and Technology Beijing, in 2019. He is currently a Professor with the University of Science and Technology Beijing. His research interests include high-capacity IM/DD systems for optical interconnect, UAV secure communication, and digital signal processing techniques for advanced modulation formats.

Lei Sun received the B.S. degree and the Ph.D. degree in communication and information system from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China, in 2006 and 2011, respectively. He is currently a Professor with the University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing. His current research interest includes 5G-TSN joint resource management, time synchronization, scheduling in TSN, and green communications.

Xianmei Wang received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Control Theory and Application from the University of Science and Technology Beijing, China, in 1999 and 2007, respectively. She is currently an Associate Professor with the School of Computer and Communication Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing. Her current research interests include machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Show less

History +

PDF (3094KB)

Abstract

For more accessible and advanced health monitoring, the Body Area Network (BAN) design with semantic technologies offers efficient information sensing and communication in smart healthcare Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT). To address the critical challenges of effective communication and reduction of data transmission pressure in AIoT-BAN, a hybrid BAN system is proposed which enhances information processing and communication capabilities by leveraging semantic understanding and multimodal processing. It incorporates a semantic communication and sensing fusion framework, offloading based on the human Body Coupled Communication (BCC) channel, and multimodal semantic information integration to reduce data transmission pressure. The proposed method offers effective inclusive smart healthcare and daily health maintenance for the general public.

Keywords

Artificial Intelligence of Things / Smart healthcare / Integrated sensing and communication / Body area network

Cite this article

Download citation ▾

Chao Ren, Ziyun Peng, Chao Gong, Haojin Li, Chen Sun, Jiahao Huo, Lei Sun, Xianmei Wang. Hybrid body area network with integrated sensing and communication for AIoT smart healthcare^✩. , 2026, 12 (5) : 776-788 DOI:10.1016/j.dcan.2026.03.016

登录浏览全文

4963

注册一个新账户忘记密码

Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 62201034), and in part by the Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. L212004-03).

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Chao Ren: Writing – review & editing, Resources, Project administration, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization; Ziyun Peng: Writing – original draft, Data curation; Chao Gong: Visualization, Validation, Software, Data curation; Haojin Li: Formal analysis, Data curation; Chen Sun: Validation, Formal analysis; Jiahao Huo: Investigation; Lei Sun: Investigation; Xianmei Wang: Validation.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

References

Publishing order | Descend order by publishing year | Descend order by cited within

[1]	J. Hou, H. Liu, Y. Zhang, W. Wang, J. Wang, GRU—based deep learning channel estimation scheme for the IEEE 802.11p standard, IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun. 12 (5) (2023) 764-768.

[2]	K. Paranjape, M. Schinkel, P. Nanayakkara, Short keynote paper: mainstreaming personalized healthcare—transforming healthcare through new era of artificial intelligence, IEEE J. Biomed. Health Inform. 24 (7) (2020) 1860-1863.

[3]	N. Taimoor, S. Rehman, Reliable and resilient AI and IoT—based personalised healthcare services: a survey, IEEE Access 10 (2022) 535-563.

[4]	T. Wu, F. Wu, J.—M. Redouté, M.R. Yuce, An autonomous wireless body area network implementation towards IoT connected healthcare applications, IEEE Access 5 (2017) 11413-11422.

[5]	T. Jabeen, H. Ashraf, A. Khatoon, S.S. Band, A. Mosavi, A lightweight genetic based algorithm for data security in wireless body area networks, IEEE Access 8 (2020) 183460-183469.

[6]	Y. Zhang, J. Hou, H. Liu, Deep learning based fully progressive image super—resolution scheme for channel estimation in OFDM systems, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 73 (6) (2024) 9021-9025.

[7]	H. Zhang, H. Zhang, W. Liu, K. Long, J. Dong, V.C.M. Leung, Energy efficient user clustering, hybrid precoding and power optimization in Terahertz MIMO—NOMA systems, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 38 (9) (2020) 2074-2085.

[8]	H. Zhang, B. Wang, C. Jiang, K. Long, A. Nallanathan, V.C.M. Leung, H.V. Poor, Energy efficient dynamic resource optimization in NOMA system, IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun. 17 (9) (2018) 5671-5683.

[9]	H. Zhang, J. Zhang, K. Long, Energy efficiency optimization for NOMA UAV network with imperfect CSI, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 38 (12) (2020) 2798-2809.

[10]	X. Shen, J. Misic, N. Kato, P. Langenörfer, X. Lin, Emerging technologies and applications of wireless communication in healthcare, J. Commun. Networks 13 (2) (2011) 81-85.

[11]	J. Indumathi, A. Shankar, M.R. Ghalib, J. Gitanjali, Q. Hua, Z. Wen, X. Qi, Block chain based internet of medical things for uninterrupted, ubiquitous, user—friendly, unflappable, unblemished, unlimited health care services (BC IoMT U6 HCS), IEEE Access 8 (2020) 216856-216872.

[12]	D.C. Nguyen, M. Ding, P.N. Pathirana, A. Seneviratne, J. Li, D. Niyato, O. Dobre, H.V. Poor, 6G internet of things: a comprehensive survey, IEEE Internet Things J. 9 (1) (2022) 359-383.

[13]	Z. Jia, X. Cai, Z. Jiao, Multi—modal physiological signals based squeeze—and—excitation network with domain adversarial learning for sleep staging, IEEE Sens. J. 22 (4) (2022) 3464-3471.

[14]	C.—T. Lin, C.—H. Chuang, Z. Cao, A.K. Singh, C.—S. Hung, Y.—H. Yu, M. Nascimben, Y.—T. Liu, J.—T. King, T.—P. Su, S.—J. Wang, Forehead EEG in support of future feasible personal healthcare solutions: sleep management, headache prevention, and depression treatment, IEEE Access 5 (2017) 10612-10621.

[15]	S. Mustafa, B. Mohammed, A. Abbosh, Novel preprocessing techniques for accurate microwave imaging of human brain, IEEE Antennas Wirel. Propag. Lett. 12 (2013) 460-463.

[16]	C.—L. Yang, C.—L. Tsai, K.—T. Cheng, S.—H. Chen, Low—invasive implantable devices of low—power consumption using high—efficiency antennas for cloud health care, IEEE J. Emerging Sel. Top. Circuits Syst. 2 (1) (2012) 14-23.

[17]	A. Faro, D. Giordano, M. Venticinque, Wireless programmable body sensor networks and situated healthcare, in: Proceedings of the 2021 9th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology (ICoICT), IEEE, 2021, pp. 269-274.

[18]	R. Khalilian, A. Rezai, Wireless body area network (WBAN) applications necessity in real time healthcare, in: Proceedings of the 2022 IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference (ISEC), IEEE, 2022, pp. 371-374.

[19]	C. Visvesvaran, N. Ramyadevi, S.P. Karthi, U.S. Sudhhir, Wireless data transfer based on bone conduction: osteoconduct, in: Proceedings of the 2021 7th International Conference on Advanced Computing and Communication Systems (ICACCS), IEEE, 2021, pp. 519-521.

[20]	R. Kumari Mohanty, S. Prakash Sahoo, M. Ranjan Kabat, A survey on emerging technologies in wireless body area network, in: Proceedings of the 2022 13th International Conference on Computing Communication and Networking Technologies (ICCCNT), IEEE, 2022, pp. 1-5.

[21]	P. Thippun, A. Booranawong, D. Buranapanichkit, W. Teerapabkajorndet, An experimental study of dynamic capabilities in a wireless body area network, in: Proceedings of the 2020 12th International Conference on Knowledge and Smart Technology (KST), IEEE, 2020, pp. 164-167.

[22]	H. Wang, M. Daneshmand, H. Fang, Artificial intelligence (AI) driven wireless body area networks: challenges and directions, in: Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Internet (ICII), IEEE, 2019, pp. 428-429.

[23]

R. Devli, R. Mehra, G.S. Panwar, Integrating a novel scheme for enhanced energy efficiency in human body area networks (HBAN) with mobile sink and cluster head selection, in: Proceedings of the 2023 International Conference on New Frontiers in Communication, Automation, Management and Security (ICCAMS), IEEE, 2023, pp. 1-6.

[24]	L. Catarinucci, D. de Donno, L. Mainetti, L. Palano, L. Patrono, M.L. Stefanizzi, L. Tarricone, An IoT—aware architecture for smart healthcare systems, IEEE Internet Things J. 2 (6) (2015) 515-526.

[25]	J. Ko, C. Lu, M.B. Srivastava, J.A. Stankovic, A. Terzis, M. Welsh, Wireless sensor networks for healthcare, Proc. IEEE 98 (11) (2010) 1947-1960.

[26]	A. Ahad, M. Tahir, K.—L.A. Yau, 5G—based smart healthcare network: architecture, taxonomy, challenges and future research directions, IEEE Access 7 (2019) 100747-100762.

[27]	D.A. Alexandrou, K.V. Pardalis, T.D. Bouras, P. Karakitsos, G.N. Mentzas, SEMPATH ontology: modeling multidisciplinary treatment schemes utilizing semantics, IEEE Trans. Inf. Technol. Biomed. 16 (2) (2012) 235-240.

[28]	S.M. Tiwari, S. Jain, A. Abraham, S. Shandilya, Secure semantic smart healthcare (S3HC), J. WEB ENG 17 (8) (2018) 617-646.

[29]	E.M. Abou—Nassar, A.M. Iliyasu, P.M. El—Kafrawy, O.—Y. Song, A.K. Bashir, A.A.A. El—Latif, DITrust chain: towards blockchain—based trust models for sustainable healthcare IoT systems, IEEE Access 8 (2020) 111223-111238.

[30]	Y. Ren, H. Zhang, F.R. Yu, W. Li, P. Zhao, Y. He, Industrial internet of things with large language models (LLMs): an intelligence—based reinforcement learning approach, IEEE Trans. Mob. Comput. (2024) 1-17.

[31]	Y. Ren, R. Xie, F.R. Yu, R. Zhang, Y. Wang, Y. He, T. Huang, Connected and autonomous vehicles in Web3: an intelligence—based reinforcement learning approach, IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst. 25 (8) (2024) 9863-9877.

[32]	J. Wan, S. Tang, D. Li, M. Imran, C. Zhang, C. Liu, Z. Pang, Reconfigurable smart factory for drug packing in healthcare industry 4.0, IEEE Trans. Ind. Inf. 15 (1) (2019) 507-516.

[33]	F.A. Satti, M. Hussain, J. Hussain, S.I. Ali, T. Ali, H.S.M. Bilal, T. Chung, S. Lee, Unsupervised semantic mapping for healthcare data storage schema, IEEE Access 9 (2021) 107267-107278.

[34]	J. Calvillo, I. Román, S. Rivas, L.M. Roa, Privilege management infrastructure for virtual organizations in healthcare grids, IEEE Trans. Inf. Technol. Biomed. 15 (2) (2011) 316-323.

[35]	G.B. Laleci, A. Dogac, A semantically enriched clinical guideline model enabling deployment in heterogeneous healthcare environments, IEEE Trans. Inf. Technol. Biomed. 13 (2) (2009) 263-273.

[36]	A. Shabo, Meaningful use of patient—centric health records for healthcare transformation, IBM J. Res. Dev. 56 (5) (2012) 1:1-1:7.

[37]	L. Di, X. Ling, W. Guangwen, Design of Chinese named entity recognition algorithm based on BiLSTM—CRF model, in: Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE Conference on Telecommunications, Optics and Computer Science (TOCS), IEEE, 2021, pp. 37-41.

[38]	J. Yoo, Body coupled communication: towards energy—efficient body area network applications, in: Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Radio—Frequency Integration Technology (RFIT), IEEE, 2017, pp. 244-246.

[39]	M. Seyedi, B. Kibret, D.T.H. Lai, M. Faulkner, A survey on intrabody communications for body area network applications, IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng. 60 (8) (2013) 2067-2079.

[40]	K.S. Cole, R.H. Cole, Dispersion and absorption in dielectrics I. Alternating current characteristics, J. Chem. Phys. 9 (4) (1941) 341-351.

[41]	S. Attard, S. Zammit, Effect of human movement on the body coupled communications channel in body area networks, in: Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE EUROCON, IEEE, 2013, pp. 335-339.

[42]	S. Cai, L. Chen, Y. Chen, H. Yin, W. Wang, Pulse—based ISAC: data recovery and ranging estimation for multi—path fading channels, IEEE Trans. Commun. 71 (8) (2023) 4819-4838.

[43]	F. Liu, Y. Cui, C. Masouros, J. Xu, T.X. Han, Y.C. Eldar, S. Buzzi, Integrated sensing and communications: toward dual—functional wireless networks for 6G and beyond, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 40 (6) (2022) 1728-1767.

[44]	J.A. Zhang, F. Liu, C. Masouros, R.W. Heath, Z. Feng, L. Zheng, A. Petropulu, An overview of signal processing techniques for joint communication and radar sensing, IEEE J. Sel. Top. Signal Process. 15 (6) (2021) 1295-1315.

[45]

D.K. Pin Tan, J. He, Y. Li, A. Bayesteh, Y. Chen, P. Zhu, W. Tong, Integrated sensing and communication in 6G: motivations, use cases, requirements, challenges and future directions, in: Proceedings of the 2021 1st IEEE International Online Symposium on Joint Communications & Sensing (JC&S), IEEE, 2021, pp. 1-6.

[46]	J. Priyatno, M.A. Bijaksana, Clustering synonym sets in english WordNet, in: Proceedings of the 2019 7th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology (ICoICT), IEEE, 2019, pp. 1-4.

[47]	H. Zhang, N. Yang, W. Huangfu, K. Long, V.C.M. Leung, Power control based on deep reinforcement learning for spectrum sharing, IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun. 19 (6) (2020) 4209-4219.

[48]

A.K. Srivastava, D. Pandey, A. Aggarwal, Summarization of medical document using pointwise mutual information (PMI)—based for web document summarization, in: Proceedings of the 2022 10th International Conference on Reliability, Infocom Technologies and Optimization (Trends and Future Directions) (ICRITO), IEEE, 2022, pp. 1-6.

[49]

K. Zhuo, P. Zhuo, J. Zhang, F. Qi, J. Yang, A wind power prediction model based on recurrent highway network and multi—layer semantic fusion attention mechanism, in: Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE 3rd International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Big Data and Algorithms (EEBDA), IEEE, 2024, pp. 387-391.

[50]	L. Zhao, Z. Pan, Cross—modal semantic fusion video emotion analysis based on attention mechanism, in: Proceedings of the 2023 8th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Big Data Analytics (ICCCBDA), IEEE, 2023, pp. 381-386.

[51]	H. Zhang, Y. Zhang, X. Liu, C. Ren, H. Li, C. Sun, Time allocation approaches for a perceptive mobile network using integration of sensing and communication, IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun. 23 (2) (2024) 1158-1169.