A method for the approximate synthesis of cellular non‐linear networks—Part 1: Circuit definition

Abstract In this paper, we face the problem of the synthesis of cellular non‐linear networks (CNNs) able to find approximate solutions of either partial differential equations or functional minimization problems. In particular, the paper deals with the approximate synthesis of the multi‐terminal resistors that include all the non‐linearities of such dynamic circuits. The proposed approximation method is based on the piecewise‐linear (PWL) approach developed by Julián et al . in the last few years, but it resorts to a different definition of the inner product and hence to other PWL basis functions. The method is applied to a case‐study concerning a CNN devoted to image processing. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.