Resonant Tunneling Diodes-Based Cellular Nonlinear Networks with Fault Tolerance Analysis

The resonant tunneling diodes (RTD) have found numerous applications in high-speed digital and analog circuits owing to its folded-back negative differential resistance (NDR) in current-voltage (I-V) characteristics and nanometer size. On account of the replacement of the state resistor in standard cell by an RTD, an RTD-based cellular neural/nonlinear network (RTD-CNN) can be obtained, in which the cell requires neither self-feedback nor a nonlinear output, thereby being more compact and versatile. This paper addresses the structure of RTD-CNN in detail and investigates its fault-tolerant properties in image processing taking horizontal line detection and edge extraction, for examples. A series of computer simulations demonstrates the promising fault-tolerant abilities of the RTD-CNN.