Memristor-Based Morphware Technology For Software Defined Radio

To address the Navy’s need for next-generation memristor-improved software-defined radios (SDRs), Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new highly reconfigurable Memristor-based Morphware (MEMO) technology. The proposed technology offers an entirely new way of implementing the SDR, using morphware, or soft-hardware. The innovations in MEMO architecture combining hybrid memristor-transistor technology enable reconfigurability to simultaneously work with different operating standards on the same hardware, with the same elements in an SDR to be configured to act as logic, signal routing, and memory. The MEMO-based memory, (up to 100 GB/cm^2), is about 1,000x higher than today’s memory, possible because of high-chip density, in which one memristor replaces about a dozen transistors, with operating speeds of up to 100x faster than today’s SDRs. In Phase I, POC will investigate and validate all of the military SDRs’ hardware components that can possibly benefit from memristive-based morphware technology to demonstrate MEMO system feasibility. We expect that at the end of Phase II, a MEMO technology system prototype will reach technology readiness level (TRL) 5 and will be ready for initial testing for Navy use. With the ubiquity of integrated circuits in electronic devices, POC’s MEMO technology will also benefit commercial industries.