A multiprocessor system-on-chip for real-time biomedical monitoring and analysis: architectural design space exploration

In this paper we focus on MPSoC architectures for human heart ECG real-time monitoring and analysis. This is a very relevant biomedical application, with a huge potential market, hence it is an ideal target for an application-specific SoC implementation. We investigate a symmetric multi-processor architecture based on STMicroelectronics VLIW DSPs that process in real-time 12-lead ECG signals. This architecture improves upon state-of-the-art SoC designs for ECG analysis in its ability to analyze the full 12 leads in real-time, even with high sampling frequencies, and ability to detect heart malfunction. We explore the design space by considering a number of hardware and software architectural options.