The AER is a neuromorphic representation of signals. When one of these cells want to send a spike event to some receiver neurons, it requests the bus. When it gets access, its address is placed on the bus. At the receiving end, the cells listen for when their address comes on the bus. When their address comes along, they give themselves a little pulse of charge simulating a postsynaptic potential.
Spike latency is minimized.
This feature goes along with the idea that precise spike timing is important . No spikes are lost to collisions. If multiple spikes happen simultaneously, they are transmitted as rapidly as possible in sequence. The architecture for a single sender-receiver pair of chips is shown below in a figure from Buster Boahen . The first functional address-event system was designed by Misha Mahowald in Carver's lab as part of her PhD thesis.