In this paper, the overview of the 1.2 kbps MELPe algorithm is presented. MELPe algorithm is an enhanced algorithm of MELP, providing 3 bit rate: 2.4 kbps, 1.2 kbps and 600 bps. In order to meet the demand of engineering application based on ARM1176JZF-S, the optimization is taken in the algorithm level and code level, the detailed process of optimization is presented. After optimization, the delay of per frame is decreased by 59% (from 135.1 ms to 55.4 ms). And the PESQ test shows that the optimization does not reduce the speech quality. The experimental results demonstrate that the optimization is feasible and effective.