A Comparative Analysis of CNF and XOR-AND Representations for QCA Majority Gate Estimation

Abstract

Complimenting the rising research of reversible computation, Quantum Dot Cellular Automata (QCA) has emerged as a potential alternative for CMOS. Although in its nascent stage, QCA promises logical reversibility; thereby adhering to the near zero power dissipation attribute of reversibility. Architectures built using quantum dot cells are majorly cascades of Majority Voters - the fundamental gate in QCA. This study investigates two predictive procedures to pre-determine the number of Majority Voters required for realizing a given Boolean function on QCA platform. One procedure utilizes the concept of optimized XOR-AND formulation of a Boolean function represented in CNF whereas the other procedure determines the Majority Voter count based on Karnaugh map approach. Pre-determination of Majority Voter count can result in analysis of efficiency deciding parameters (area etc.) beforehand, hence the motivation of the study.