Abstract
This work is motivated by the need for faithful digital simulation of cellular neural networks (CNNs) that maintains most of their qualitative properties of stability and convergence. An interconnection of nonlinear digital filters mimicking behaviors of the analog CNNs is proposed, and the main properties are studied in detail. The discrete model obtained is proven to have the same convergence properties as the original analog network. The key to this development is the use of an appropriate discretization scheme. Our discrete approximation to the nonlinear state-space representation of cellular neural networks is such that the Lyapunov function used to show convergence in analog cellular neural networks is still a Lyapunov function (when appropriately discretized) for our nonlinear digital filter network. This is in contrast to other digital simulations of CNNs, which have not been proven to preserve the convergence properties. The network of nonlinear digital filters so introduced thus adds another item to the catalog of digital filters obtained via appropriate discretization of analog circuits, e.g., wave digital filters, orthogonal filters, and certain other of their more recently studied nonlinear counterparts.