ANALOG-DIGITAL ELECTRONIC METHOD AND DEVICE FOR ACTIVATING NEURONS FOR USE IN ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS

Abstract

An electronic circuit that functions as a segmented linear activation (PWL) function for analog neural networks; and a digital circuit for use in digital neural networks; the analog circuit includes two resistors and an operational amplifier (OpAMP), plus a current-based design method that allows a single-input, multiple-output (SIMO) circuit; the digital circuit allows fixed-point design and can be integrated as a module to define the active or inactive state of each neuron within a network; it consists of five dedicated registers to store the activation function parameters; a multiplier that defines the decision time between active and inactive states (slope); two multiplexers that define the positive and negative parts of the PWL activation function and a multiplexer that defines the module's output;two comparators and a two's complement block to locate the state of the artificial neuron by means of the PWL activation function.;