Rapid processor customization for design optimization: A case study of ECG R-peak detection

In engineering wireless body area network platforms it is crucial to meet performance goals at minimal hardware cost and energy required. This paper describes a design flow that relies on processor customization of Tensilica's Xtensa processor cores. We introduce custom instructions to expedite wavelet processing used in an ECG R-peak detection application. We explore several instruction extensions and show that customized processor cores significantly reduce program execution time and energy requirements for this application.