The wireless revolution in communication and computing has imbued electrical engineers with a steadily deepening appreciation for the importance of energy-efficient design. On the other hand, energy efficiency has for eons been a paramount consideration of living systems.
Statistical thermodynamics says that kTln2 is a lower bound for how many joules of energy must be expended in order either to encode/transmit/decode or to write/read/erase one bit of information in an environment at T degrees Kelvin, k being Boltzmann's constant. Biological encoding and decoding that performs close to the thermodynamic limit uses continuous time differential pulse position modulation (CTDPPM), arguably the most energy-efficient way to encode and transmit information. The co-PIs are applying their interdisciplinary expertise in neuroscience and information theory to address research topics such as: (i) Performance trade-offs in their bits/joule maximizing exact solution of a 1915 model by Schrodinger now known to be applicable to thresholding neurons, (ii) Extension of the Schrodinger-style optimization to short term dynamics of bits/joule maximizing CTDPPM systems; the present solution provides statistically optimum behavior only in the long term, (iii) Steps toward extension to networks containing multi-compartment elements, emphasizing hierarchical architectures with feedback governing short-term distribution of energy resources, and (iv) Intriguing connections with the burgeoning research discipline of network coding.
