Abstract
Stigmergy is a communication method based on changing the surrounding environment according to reference feedbacks. It is typical within animal colonies that are able to process even complex information by releasing signals into the environment, which are subsequently received and processed by other elements of the colony. For example, ants searching for food leave traces of a pheromone, like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs, along the way. When food is found, they return to the anthill reinforcing this pheromone trace as a signal and reminder to all the others. Similar techniques are used in routing software even if stigmergic hardware might be even more efficient, fast, and energy saving. Recently, a stigmergic photonic gate based on soliton waveguides has been proposed; this particular stigmergic hardware can switch the output ratio of the channels as a result of optical feedback. Based on these results, in this study, we analyze stigmergic electronic gates that can be addressed through external feedback, as the photonic ones do. We show that the nonlinear response of such gates must be based on quadratic saturating conductances driven by feedback signals. For this purpose, networks of stigmergic gates require two parallel and communicating current circuits: one to transmit information, and another for feedback signals to control the gate switching. We also show that by increasing the number of terminals per single gate, from 2 × 2 to 3 × 3 or higher, the overall power consumption can be reduced by a few orders of magnitude.
Highlights
Stigmergy is a method of communication that uses decentralized systems in which individuals can communicate with each other by changing their surroundings [1]
The optical stigmergy corresponds exactly to such modification: any optical feedback re-injected in the soliton channel would increase the refractive index contrast between the channel and the environment, acting like an enhancement of the pheromone trace and unbalancing any channel crossing
The present work aims to reproduce individual electronic gates with a stigmergic response based on that of the equivalent photonic gates [26], which has proven to be able to replicate the evolution of stigmergic processes
Summary
Stigmergy is a method of communication that uses decentralized systems in which individuals can communicate with each other by changing their surroundings [1]. Many software codes optimize the trajectories followed by signals in complex Ethernet and Intranet communication networks, using algorithms that simulate the search for food by ants. Such software systems are effective, but they require computation time to develop necessary algorithms, which increases exponentially with the complexity of the network. Using photonic technology, a stigmergic logic gate [26] based on soliton waveguides has been created [27] These waveguides exploit the refractive channels induced by laser beams that do not diffract (via self-confined beams, called spatial solitons). This model aims to understand the physical processes underlying a stigmergic gate and to analyze how complex stigmergic networks, based on such gates, could work, starting from simple structures, characterized by few inputs and few outputs, up to more complex structures not yet realized in the photonic equivalent
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