Accurate CMOS implementation of PWL CNN neuron activations

The paper proposes a new electronic design which closely approximates the standard implementation in CMOS technology for the neuron cell of the Cellular Neural Networks (CNNs) introduced by Chua and Yang (see IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst., vol. 35, p. 1257-1272, 1988). This permits us to obtain an input-output neuron activation ideal piecewise linear (PWL) activation with three segments. The possibility of achieving such a good approximation is of great interest in that it makes it possible to exploit the huge body of efficient design techniques for PWL CNNs already available in the literature.