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arXiv · 2604.09315

A 0.5-V Linear Neuromorphic Voltage-to-Spike Encoder Using a Bulk-Driven Transconductor

Meysam Akbari·Erika Covi·Kea-Tiong Tang
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Abstract

This work introduces an ultralow-power voltage-to-spike encoder that achieves near-linear voltage-to-firing-rate conversion by pairing a linearized bulk-driven transconductor with a DPI-based LIF neuron. A tail-less bulk-driven differential pair improves large-signal linearity, while a translinear linearization network suppresses the dominant sinh nonlinearity and stabilizes the bias-tunable V-to-I gain. The resulting current feeds a DPI front-end that linearizes current-to-spike conversion. Fabricated in TSMC 0.18-um CMOS and operating at VDD = 0.5 V with 2-27 nA reference current, the encoder achieves a deviation of less than 5.6 percent from linearity over 0.1-0.4 V input, consumes 22-180 nW, and occupies 0.0074 mm^2.

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Meysam Akbari, Erika Covi, Kea-Tiong Tang. 2026-04-10. A 0.5-V Linear Neuromorphic Voltage-to-Spike Encoder Using a Bulk-Driven Transconductor. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09315

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