The cochlea, or inner ear, inspired the design of a fast, ultra-
broadband, low-power radio chip. Rahul Sarpeshkar, associate
professor of electrical engineering and computer science at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his graduate student,
Soumyajit Mandal, dissected the workings of the human ear.
Sarpeshkar said, "The more I started to look at the ear, the
more I realized it's like a super radio with 3,500 parallel
channels." Their “RF cochlea” chip mimics the structure and
function of the biological cochlea which uses fluid mechanics,
piezoelectrics and neural signal processing to convert sound
waves into electrical signals that are routed to the brain. The
RF cochlea is embedded on a small silicon chip which is attached
to an antenna. It works as an analog spectrum analyzer, picking
up electromagnetic waves which travel through electronic
inductors and capacitors to electronic transistors, much like
the fluid, membrane, and hair cells in the human cochlea
translate sound into electric signals the