Multiplierless QRS detection algorithm for mobile ECG monitoring based on approximate computing

• The article proposes a multiplierless QRS complex detector for mobile ECG monitoring. • Multiplierless arithmetic is enabled by approximation of real numbers by sum of powers-of-two. • Multiplications or divisions by powers-of-two is executed simply by bit-shift operations. • Multiplierless QRS detector achieves Se = 99.66 %, PPV = 99.52 % and DER = 0.82 % • Methodology to adopt multiplierless arithmetic can be applied to other QRS detectors. The QRS detectors for wearable devices should be energy-efficient, even at the price of some loss of detection accuracy. This paper presents a low-complexity multiplierless QRS complex detection algorithm for mobile long-term ECG monitoring based on arithmetic that approximates real numbers by a sum of power-of-two components. The proposed hardware-friendly computation technique involves only additions, subtractions, and multiplications or divisions by powers-of-two, executed simply by bit-shift operations. The performance of the algorithm, called Multiplierless Dual-Path Preprocessing (ML-DPP) QRS detector, on the MIT-BIH Database is as follows: Se = 99.66 %, PPV = 99.52 %, F 1 = 99.59 %, ACC = 99.18 %, and DER = 0.82 %. The deterioration in detection accuracy of the multiplierless version is negligible compared to the optimal algorithm settings with real numbers, while computational complexity is substantially reduced. The proposed methodology to support the multiplication-free arithmetic can be applied to other QRS detection algorithms.