Winner-Take-All Networks with Lateral Excitation

Abstract

In this paper we present two analog VLSI circuits that implement current mode winner-take-all (WTA) networks with lateral excitation. We describe their principles of operation and compare their performance to previously proposed circuits. The desirable properties of these circuits, namely compactness, low power consumption, collective processing and robustness to noisy inputs make them ideal for system level integration in analog VLSI neuromorphic systems. As application example, we implemented a circuit that employs an adaptive photoreceptor array as the input stage to the WTA network for edge enhancement.