Towards ultra-efficient QCA reversible circuits

Abstract

Nanotechnologies, remarkably Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA), offer an attractive perspective for future computing technologies. In this paper, QCA is investigated as an implementation method for reversible logic. A novel XOR gate and also a new approach to implement 2:1 multiplexer are presented. Moreover, an efficient and potent universal reversible gate based on the proposed XOR gate is designed. The proposed reversible gate has a superb performance in implementing the QCA standard benchmark combinational functions in terms of area, complexity, power consumption, and cost function in comparison to the other reversible gates. The gate achieves the lowest overall cost among the most cost-efficient designs presented so far, with a reduction of 24%. In order to employ the merits of reversibility, the proposed reversible gate is leveraged to design the four common latches (D latch, T latch, JK latch, and SR latch). Specialized structures of the proposed circuits could be used as building blocks in designing sequential and combinational circuits in QCA architectures.