Event-based 64-channel binaural silicon cochlea with Q enhancement mechanisms

This paper describes an event-based binaural silicon cochlea aimed at spatial audition and auditory scene analysis. The chip has a matched pair of 64-stage cascaded analog second-order filter banks with 512 pulse-frequency modulated (PFM) address-event representation (AER) outputs. The spectral selectivity is sharpened through 2 different on-chip methods: an on-chip local Q DAC and an on-chip spatial sharpening through nearest neighbour lateral inhibition. The fabricated chip in a 4-metal 2-poly 0.35um CMOS process consumes peak 25mW power for the digital circuits and 33mW for the analog core. Dynamic range to produce PFM output is 36dB (25mVpp to 1500mVpp at microphone preamp output). Event timing jitter is 2us for 250mVpp input. The peak output bandwidth is 10M events per second (eps) but typical speech scenarios show rates of 20keps.