Introducing new algorithms for realising an FIR filter with less hardware in order to eliminate power line interference from the ECG signal

Abstract

Power line interference (PLI) corrupts biomedical recordings. A notch filter is one of the filters that has been suggested to suppress the fundamental PLI and its harmonics in electrocardiographic recordings. Using finite impulse response (FIR) filters are one of the interesting ways to filter this interference in order to receive a rather pure signal. The frequent use of FIR filters create a field which studies realising an FIR filter and its various methods, which directly deals with the amount of hardware of the filter. In this study, the authors introduce new algorithms to realise FIR filters using less amount of hardware. By authors' definition, the filter is a black box and the authors focus on the quality of the output signal rather than focusing on the quality of frequency response of the filter. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithms remarkably reduces the hardware complexity of the FIR filter for eliminating PLI from the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal.