# End-to-end Automated Deep Neural Network Optimization for PPG-based Blood Pressure Estimation on Wearables

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.10117 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10117/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 74 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Apr 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [DARTS: Differentiable Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.09055/) (2018)
- [PACT: Parameterized Clipping Activation for Quantized Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.06085/) (2018)
- [Wave-U-Net: A Multi-Scale Neural Network for End-to-End Audio Source Separation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.03185/) (2018)
- [Rethinking Differentiable Search for Mixed-Precision Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05795/) (2020)
- [DORY: Automatic End-to-End Deployment of Real-World DNNs on Low-Cost IoT MCUs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.07127/) (2020)
- [PULP-NN: Accelerating Quantized Neural Networks on Parallel Ultra-Low-Power RISC-V Processors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.11263/) (2019)
- [Q-PPG: Energy-Efficient PPG-based Heart Rate Monitoring on Wearable Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14907/) (2022)
- [Enabling Mixed-Precision Quantized Neural Networks in Extreme-Edge Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.07759/) (2020)
- [PLiNIO: A User-Friendly Library of Gradient-based Methods for Complexity-aware DNN Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09488/) (2023)
- [Embedding Temporal Convolutional Networks for Energy-Efficient PPG-Based Heart Rate Monitoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04396/) (2022)
- [BP-Net: Efficient Deep Learning for Continuous Arterial Blood Pressure Estimation using Photoplethysmogram](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14558/) (2021)
- [EnhancePPG: Improving PPG-based Heart Rate Estimation with Self-Supervision and Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17860/) (2024)
- [Energy-efficient Blood Pressure Monitoring based on Single-site Photoplethysmogram on Wearable Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.00672/) (2021)
- [TransfoRhythm: A Transformer Architecture Conductive to Blood Pressure Estimation via Solo PPG Signal Capturing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15352/) (2024)
- [Optimization and Deployment of Deep Neural Networks for PPG-based Blood Pressure Estimation Targeting Low-power Wearables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.07485/) (2024)
- [A Survey of PPG's Application in Authentication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11291/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Photoplethysmography (PPG)-based blood pressure (BP) estimation is a challenging task, particularly on resource-constrained wearable devices. However, fully on-board processing is desirable to ensure user data confidentiality. Recent deep neural networks (DNNs) have achieved high BP estimation accuracy by reconstructing BP waveforms or directly regressing BP values, but their large memory, computation, and energy requirements hinder deployment on wearables. This work introduces a fully automated DNN design pipeline that combines hardware-aware neural architecture search (NAS), pruning, and mixed-precision search (MPS) to generate accurate yet compact BP prediction models optimized for ultra-low-power multicore systems-on-chip (SoCs). Starting from state-of-the-art baseline models on four public datasets, our optimized networks achieve up to 7.99% lower error with a 7.5x parameter reduction, or up to 83x fewer parameters with negligible accuracy loss. All models fit within 512 kB of memory on our target SoC (GreenWaves' GAP8), requiring less than 55 kB and achieving an average inference latency of 142 ms and energy consumption of 7.25 mJ. Patient-specific fine-tuning further improves accuracy by up to 64%, enabling fully autonomous, low-cost BP monitoring on wearables.