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QCA Circuits for Robust Coplanar Crossing

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Abstract

In this paper, different circuits of Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA) are proposed for the so-called coplanar crossing. Coplanar crossing is one of the most interesting features of QCA because it allows for mono-layered interconnected circuits, whereas CMOS technology needs different levels of metalization. However, the characteristics of the coplanar crossing make it prone to malfunction due to thermal noise or defects. The proposed circuits exploit the majority voting properties of QCA to allow a robust crossing of wires on the Cartesian plane. This is accomplished using enlarged lines and voting. A Bayesian Network (BN) based simulator is utilized for evaluation; results are provided to assess robustness in the presence of cell defects and thermal effects. The BN simulator provides fast and reliable computation of the signal polarization versus normalized temperature. Simulation of the wire crossing circuits at different operating temperatures is provided with respect to defects and a quantitative metric for performance under temperature variations is proposed and assessed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, 33620, USA

    Sanjukta Bhanja

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Marco Ottavi & Fabrizio Lombardi

  3. Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettronica, Università di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Rome, 00133, Italy

    Salvatore Pontarelli

Authors
  1. Sanjukta Bhanja
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  2. Marco Ottavi
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  3. Fabrizio Lombardi
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  4. Salvatore Pontarelli
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marco Ottavi.

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Editor: M. Tehranipoor

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Bhanja, S., Ottavi, M., Lombardi, F. et al. QCA Circuits for Robust Coplanar Crossing. J Electron Test 23, 193–210 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10836-006-0551-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10836-006-0551-y

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