Abstract

Drawing inspiration from our nature, photonic systems that use light to imitate neural algorithms and behaviors of nature could be effective to solve complex problems in human's civilized society that have been challenging for conventional electronic to tackle. Since neural algorithms are natural designs that have undergone hundreds of million years of evolution and govern the survival of the organism, therefore, those neural algorithms are highly effective for the designated tasks. The goal of this article is to review the recent demonstrations of the photonic implementations of small scale functional neural algorithms for dynamic RF signal processing applications. In this article, two small-scale neural algorithms are reviewed – (i) spike timing dependent plasticity, an algorithm that governs how neural network are connecting together and how learning/adaptation can be achieved in animals, and (ii) jamming avoidance response in Eigenmannia, an algorithm in a gene of electric fish that mitigates frequency jamming between neighboring electric fish. The photonic circuits that are inspired by the two neural algorithms are also presented and the real-life applications of the neural algorithms in human society will be discussed.

Biomimetic photonics: jamming avoidance system in Eigenmannia

Ruizhe Lin, Jia Ge, Phiet Tran, Luis Alberto Perea, Ryan Toole, and Mable P. Fok
Opt. Express 26(10) 13349-13360 (2018)

Photonic spiking neural networks with event-driven femtojoule optoelectronic neurons based on Izhikevich-inspired model

Yun-Jhu Lee, Mehmet Berkay On, Xian Xiao, Roberto Proietti, and S. J. Ben Yoo
Opt. Express 30(11) 19360-19389 (2022)

Analog-to-spike encoding and time-efficient RF signal processing with photonic neurons

Bowen Ma, Junfeng Zhang, Yang Zhao, and Weiwen Zou
Opt. Express 30(26) 46541-46551 (2022)

Photonic implementation of a neuronal algorithm applicable towards angle of arrival detection and localization

Ryan Toole and Mable P. Fok
Opt. Express 23(12) 16133-16141 (2015)

Hardware-algorithm collaborative computing with photonic spiking neuron chip based on an integrated Fabry–Perot laser with a saturable absorber

Shuiying Xiang, Yuechun Shi, Xingxing Guo, Yahui Zhang, Hongji Wang, Dianzhuang Zheng, Ziwei Song, Yanan Han, Shuang Gao, Shihao Zhao, Biling Gu, Hailing Wang, Xiaojun Zhu, Lianping Hou, Xiangfei Chen, Wanhua Zheng, Xiaohua Ma, and Yue Hao
Optica 10(2) 162-171 (2023)