Bursting Hodgkin-Huxley model-based ultra-low-power neuromimetic silicon neuron

This paper presents a compact, ultra-low-power implementation of the bursting Hodgkin-Huxley model-based silicon neuron. The Hodgkin-Huxley model is a neuron imitation that consists of two calcium current channels, a potassium current channel and a leakage current channel. In the proposed architecture, the calcium and the potassium current channels have been implemented using a sigmoid-function structure, a log-domain filter, and a linear transconductor. Different neuronal signals can be generated by changing the value of the capacitor in the log-domain filter. The proposed silicon neuron is capable of generating four different outputs, namely, spiking, spiking with latency, bursting, and chaotic signals. Ultra-low-power consumption is achieved by current-reuse technique and subthreshold region operation of MOSFETs. The circuit is designed using 0.13 μm standard CMOS process. The entire design uses 43 transistors, with a total power consumption of only 43 nW. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.