An Area Efficient Lifting Wavelet for ECG R-peak Detection Applications
Abstract
Noise removal is a vital pre-processing step in wearable ECG devices for accurate arrhythmia detection. This paper proposes a hardware-efficient, multiplier-less FPGA architecture for ECG denoising using a lifting-based wavelet transform. A universal thresholding function with soft thresholding enhances signal quality, while a modified lifting-based DWT eliminates multipliers and simplifies computation. An optimized median calculation and thresholding method remove the need for comparators in VLSI design. ECG data from the MIT-BIH databases validate the approach, achieving an SNR improvement of 7.4 dB and an MSE of 0.0206. FPGA implementation on the Nexys 4 DDR board demonstrates low hardware usage and a high operating frequency of 166 MHz, outperforming existing designs.
Fields of Study & Subjects
ECG Monitoring and Analysis
Cardiac electrophysiology and arrhythmias
Image and Signal Denoising Methods
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Journal of Electronics and Informatics
- Publisher
- Inventive Research Organization
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 267–280
- Publication date
- 6 January 2026