Impulse-based asynchronous serial communication protocol on optical fiber link for AER systems

We developed an Impulse-Based Asynchronous Serial Address-Event Representation (IB-AS-AER) protocol. It allows for full-duplex communication and explicit flow control, does not require any clock data recovery or accurate clock relationship between the transmitter and receiver. Moreover, the optical fiber communication link, that galvanically isolates the communicating devices, highly improves the robustness to electromagnetic disturbances, reduces the power consumption and allows for high data rate transmissions. In addition, the proposed implementation does not require any specific hardware and can be developed on low-cost FPGAs as well as on full-custom ASICs. Preliminary tests performed at 100 Mbps raw bit transfer rate confirm a 32 bit maximum event rate of 2.9 Meps

Asynchronous, event-driven readout of POSFET devices for tactile sensing

In this work, we report a novel circuit architecture to implement event-driven tactile sensing using the POSFET tactile device. The proposed circuit matches advantages of the POSFET device (integration of sensing and electronics on the same die, high electromechanical transduction bandwidth, etc.) with the ones of the event-driven approach. In the proposed circuit, the POSFET device is interfaced with a spiking neuron, of the type integrate and fire: the input mechanical stimulus is translated into digital pulses. The proposed approach paves the way for the implementation of neuromorphic integrated tactile sensing systems based on POSFET devices