MOS circuits for median filtering applications

Several circuit configurations to sort or detect the highest voltage in a range of input signals are presented. These MOS-based circuits can generally be used as median filters in image processing to sort out the median pixel in a neighborhood of pixels. They can be generalized to n-input sorter circuits for generating the median at the output. They can also be used in maximum-voltage detection applications and in neural network systems where the winner-take-all subcircuit is required