2011 Volume 2 Issue 2 Pages 218-225
Hospedales et al. have recently proposed a neural network model of the “vestibulo-ocular reflex” (VOR) in which a common input was given to multiple nonidentical spiking neurons that were exposed to uncorrelated temporal noise, and the output was represented by the sum of these neurons. Although the function of the VOR network is equivalent to pulse density modulation, the neurons' non-uniformity and temporal noises given to the neurons were shown to improve the output spike's fidelity to the analog input. In this paper, we propose a CMOS analog circuit for implementing the VOR network that exploits the non-uniformity of real MOS devices. Through extensive laboratory experiments using discrete MOS devices, we show that the output's fidelity to the input pulses is clearly improved by using multiple neuron circuits, in which the non-uniformity is naturally embedded into the devices.