High-performance CMOS current-mode Winner-take-all circuit

A novel CMOS current-mode Winner-take-all(WTA) circuit is presented.The design utilizes a regenerative circuit to improve the resolution and speed.Without using any current mirror,a rectifier circuit is used to output the current,which improves the precision of the output current.Different from conventional WTA designs with a binary-tree structure,a new concurrent N-input WTA structure is also proposed.An 8-input WTA is implemented using TSMC 0.18μm technology.The design is evaluated and compared with the well-known WTA benchmark circuits.Simulation results show that proposed design can provide a resolution of 1nA and a precision of 99.99%,and at the same time provide the compactness and low power.It is ideal for a variety of embedded intelligent applications.