SoC-based architecture for biomedical signal processing

Over the last decades, many algorithms have been proposed for processing biomedical signals. Most of these algorithms have been focused on the elimination of noise and artifacts existing in these signals, so they can be used for automatic monitoring and/or diagnosis applications. With regard to remote monitoring, the use of portable devices often requires a reduced number of resources and power consumption, being necessary to reach a trade-off between the accuracy of algorithms and their computational complexity. This paper presents a SoC (System-on-Chip) architecture, based on a FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) device, suitable for the implementation of biomedical signal processing. The proposal has been successfully validated by implementing an efficient QRS complex detector. The results show that, using a reduced amount of resources, values of sensitivity and positive predictive value above 99.49% are achieved, which make the proposed approach suitable for telemedicine applications.