Resilience Analysis of Distributed Wireless Spiking Neural Networks

Spiking neural networks (SNN) are expected to enable several use-cases in future communication networks (beyond 5G and 6G), as edge AI and battery-constrained systems can leverage the fast computation and high-power efficiency offered by SNNs. In this work we consider a Distributed Wireless SNN (DW-SNN) system and we analyze its performance in terms of inference accuracy and total neural activity when radio losses are applied to spikes transferred during the inference phase. Our aim is to understand how radio losses impact performance when considering different SNN spike communication types, i.e., input, excitatory, and inhibitory spikes. Then we evaluate the impact of different traffic prioritization approaches among SNN spikes when considering a shared channel capacity being available for SNN activity. From these analyses, we derive some key insights and features that can be considered when applying a DW-SNN and handling its traffic over wireless communication systems. Finally, we report a prototype implementation of DW-SNN using custom-built IoT components, which we use to further investigate different coverage scenarios.