Data acquisition systems are used for data or signal monitoring in many applications. In the biomedical field, signals such as from an ECG, EEG or PPG are monitored using data acquisition systems. A review of several ARM processor-based data acquisition systems for biomedical applications is presented here. A new ARM processor-based system-on-chip architecture is presented for heart rate monitoring applications, which is implemented in Altera Cyclone II FPGA. A PPG-based sensor is used to carry out heart rate monitoring. An experiment is carried out to verify the functionality of the system by monitoring the heart rate of a student. Based on the results, the monitored heart rate is within the average range for heart rate. According to the compilation report, the total logic elements used were 4740, and the total power estimated for the system in Cyclone II FPGA is 199.59mW.
