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An energy function-based autoassociative memory design method to store a given set of unipolar binary memory vectors as attractive fixed points of an asynchronous discrete Hopfield network (DHN) is presented. The discrete quadratic energy function whose local minima correspond to the attractive fixed points of the network is constructed via solving a system of linear inequalities derived from the strict local minimality conditions. The weights and the thresholds are then calculated using this energy function. If the inequality system is infeasible, we conclude that no such asynchronous DHN exists, and extend the method to design a discrete piecewise quadratic energy function, which can be minimized by a generalized version of the conventional DHN, also proposed herein. In spite of its computational complexity, computer simulations indicate that the original method performs better than the conventional design methods in the sense that the memory can store, and provide the attractiveness for almost all memory sets whose cardinality is less than or equal to the dimension of its elements. The overall method, together with its extension, guarantees the storage of an arbitrary collection of memory vectors, which are mutually at least two Hamming distances away from each other, in the resulting network. Index Terms--Associative memory, memory storage and retrieval.

A binary associative memory design procedure that gives a Hopfield network with a symmetric binary weight matrix is introduced in this paper. The proposed method is based on introducing the memory vectors as maximal independent sets to an undirected graph, which is constructed by Boolean operations analogous to the conventional Hebb rule. The parameters of the resulting network is then determined via the adjacency matrix of this graph in order to find a maximal independent set whose characteristic vector is close to the given distorted vector. We show that the method provides attractiveness for each memory vector and avoids spurious memories whenever the set of given memory vectors satisfy certain compatibility conditions, which implicitly imply sparsity. The applicability of the design method is finally investigated by a quantitative analysis of the compatibility conditions. Index Terms--Hebb rule, maximal independent set, neurodynamics and attractor networks.

A method to store each element of an integral memory set M [subset] [{1, 2, ..., K}.sup.n] as a fixed point into a complex-valued multistate Hopfield network is introduced. The method employs a set of inequalities to render each memory pattern as a strict local minimum of a quadratic energy landscape. Based on the solution of this system, it gives a recurrent network of n multistate neurons with complex and symmetric synaptic weights, which operates on the finite state space [{1, 2, ..., K}. sup.n] to minimize this quadratic functional. Maximum number of integral vectors that can be embedded into the energy landscape of the network by this method is investigated by computer experiments. This paper also enlightens the performance of the proposed method in reconstructing noisy gray-scale images. Index Terms--Complex-valued Hopfield network, gray-scale image retrieval, linear inequalities, multistate associative memory.