The rapid advancement of medical digitalization technology is driving the transformation of traditional hospitals into digital hospitals, and this trend is becoming increasingly strong. However, current radio frequency (RF)-based smart healthcare systems face challenges such as limited spectrum resources, restricted usage environments, information security risks owing to RF signal propagation, and significant interference from similar systems. Visible light communication (VLC) is an optical wireless communication technology that utilizes LED-based visible light to transmit signals. Unlike traditional RF channels, VLC eliminates bandwidth congestion and can be integrated cost-effectively with existing lighting infrastructure. VLC systems offer several advantages, including high bandwidth, ease of deployment, no spectrum authorization, immunity to electromagnetic interference, environmental friendliness, energy efficiency, and enhanced security and reliability, making them ideal for smart healthcare applications. This study presents a design scheme for a digital operating room based on a VLC system and provides preliminary verification through simulations.

To design a digital operating room utilizing VLC technology, uplink and downlink communication systems were implemented. For the uplink, data is converted into optical signals by the VLC transmission unit and transmitted to the VLC receiving unit. The shadowless lamp acts as a bridge, relaying the data from the operating room to an external data server via the network. The server processes, analyzes, and stores the uploaded data. For the downlink, the processed information from the server is relayed back to the shadowless lamp’s VLC transmission module through the network. The VLC transmitting module controls the speed and intensity of light flickering to encode downstream data into optical signals, which are transmitted to the VLC receiving unit. A reliable VLC system was designed and implemented by effectively utilizing the shadowless lamps and spatial diversity. Based on the structural design of the VLC transceiver unit, a VLC video transmission system was built, and the performance was tested in the laboratory. At the transmitter, the video source is fed into the driving circuit, where signal modulation is performed on the LED light using the bias current for transmission. At the receiving end, avalanche photodiodes capture the optical signals, which are then amplified and sent to a chip for demodulation and signal recovery, ultimately retrieving the video signal for display. By improving alignment between the transmitter and receiver, choosing optimal modulation techniques, and adjusting the communication rate, a prototype system was developed to evaluate overall performance, including transmission rate and distance under different parameter sets. These tests confirmed the feasibility of this newly proposed VLC communication system.

A VLC transmission system was developed and tested within a simulated digital operating room environment to replicate the actual operation process. The stability of the VLC communication system was verified, demonstrating that the designed VLC video transmission system can transmit data reliably in different modes.

The results confirm that the VLC system offers robust connectivity and enables high-speed, dependable data transmission for practical digital surgical environments.