Improved implementation of the silicon cochlea

Author

Watts, Lloyd ; Kerns, Douglas A. ; Lyon, Richard F. ; Mead, Carver A.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA

Volume

27

Issue

5

fYear

1992

fDate

5/1/1992 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

692

Lastpage

700

Abstract

The original `Analog electronic cochlea´ of R.F. Lyon and C.A. Mead (Trans. Acoust., Speech, Signal Processing, vol.36, no.7, p.1119-34, 1988) used a cascade of second-order filter sections in subthreshold analog VLSI to implement a low-power, real-time model of early auditory processing. Experience with many silicon-cochlea chips has allowed the identification of a number of important design issues, namely dynamic range, stability, device mismatch, and compactness. In this, paper, the original design is discussed in light of these issues, and circuit and layout techniques are described which significantly improve its performance, robustness, and efficiency. Measurements from test chips verify the improved performance

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; VLSI; acoustic signal processing; active filters; biomedical electronics; ear; elemental semiconductors; hearing; linear integrated circuits; physiological models; signal processing equipment; silicon; Analog electronic cochlea; Si cochlea chips; auditory processing; compactness; device mismatch; dynamic range; layout techniques; low-power; monolithic IC; real-time model; second-order filter sections; stability; subthreshold analog VLSI; Circuit stability; Circuit testing; Dynamic range; Filters; Robustness; Semiconductor device measurement; Signal processing; Silicon; Speech processing; Very large scale integration;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9200

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/4.133156

Filename

133156