Design of a real-time ECG filter for resource constraint computer

Obtaining high quality ECG signals with a portable remote ECG acquisition system is a big challenge considering resource limitations. In this paper, we present a digital filter design method that is suitable for resource constraint microprocessor for removing noise from ECG data in real time. The method uses integer coefficients, which has low computation complexity, good denoising performance, and is easily adapted to other frequency specification. The method is verified by MIT/BIH Arrhythmia Database and tested on a MSP430 platform for performance evaluation. Results show that the filter works very well in eliminating typical noise in ECG signals without requiring excessive computing power in real time.