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A novel quantum dot cellular automata for 4-bit code converters

Article  in  Optik - International Journal for Light and Electron Optics · January 2016
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijleo.2015.12.119

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 Optik 127 (2016) 4246–4249

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

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journal homepage: www.elsevier.de/ijleo

A novel quantum dot cellular automata for 4-bit code converters

Nandini G. Rao a , P.C. Srikanth a,∗ , Preeta Sharan b
a
Department of Electronics and Communication, MCE, Hassan, Karnataka, India
b
Department of Electronics and Communication, TOCE, Bengaluru, Karnataka India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Quantum-dot cellular automata is a promising successor of CMOS technology. QCA proposed by Lent et al.
Received 9 September 2015 is an emerging technology that offers an innovative approach for computing at nano-scale by monitoring
Accepted 28 December 2015 the position of a single electron. This technology allows the implementation of logic devices using quan-
tum dots instead of transistors, diodes. QCA technology has large potential in terms of high space density
Keywords: and power, possible to achieve miniaturization of circuits and high speed processing. The paper provides
Quantum-dot cellular automata
an efficient design and layout of code converters based on quantum-dot cellular automata using QCADe-
Binary to gray and gray to binary code
signer tool. In this paper a number of new results on binary to gray and gray to binary code converters
converters
QCAD tool
and detailed simulation using QCAD designer tool is presented. We have performed a comparative study
of proposed design with recent previous designs and proved that proposed design is efficient in terms of
complexity, cell count, area usage and clocking.
© 2015 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction eral simulation engines facilitate rapid and accurate simulation. It

Quantum Dot cellular Automata (QCA) is a new and emerging
computing paradigm. The basic element of QCA is a quantum cell
[1]. QCA is visualized as a coupled dot system with four quantum
dots at the corners of a square structure. Two free electrons are
confined to any of two quantum dots [2]. Quantum dots are nano-
structures created from standard semiconductive materials such
as Si/SiO2 [3]. QCA accomplishes the logic operations and the data
flow occur in the circuit by means of columbic interaction of the
electrons of neighboring cells [4].
QCA structures are designed as an array of quantum cells [5].
QCA uses polarization effect rather than conventional charge flow
or current for the transmission of digital information. Thus a quan-
tum cell is responsible for the transfer of information throughout
the circuit. The basic primitives used in QCA are three input major-
ity gates, wire and an inverter [6].
2. QCA designer
is the first publicly available design and simulation tool for QCA.
QCA designer tool was developed at the ATIPS Laboratory, at the
University of Calgary. QCADesigner currently supports three dif-
ferent simulation engines, and many of the CAD features required
for complex circuit design.
3. QCA architecture
3.1. Basics of QCA
The basic element of QCA is a quantum cell. The fundamental
primitives are majority gate, inverter and wire. Each QCA cell each
has four quantum dots and two free electrons. The locations of the
electrons determine the binary states. These two arrangements are
denoted as cell polarization P = +1 and P = −1. By using cell polariza-
tion P = +1 to represent logic “1” and P = −1 to represent logic “0”.
Binary information is encoded in the charge configuration of the
QCA cell [6] (Fig. 1).

QCA circuit designers require an accurate and rapid simulation

and design layout tool to determine the functionality of QCA cir-
cuits. QCADesigner tool gives the ability to quickly layout a QCA
design by providing an extensive set of CAD tools [7]. As well, sev-
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 9844285954.
E-mail address: srikanthpc1@yahoo.com (P.C. Srikanth).
3.2. QCA cell
A quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is a square nanostruc-
ture of electron wells having free electrons. Each cell has four
quantum dots. The four dots are located in the four corners. The
cell can be charged with two free electrons. By using proper clock-
ing mechanism, the electrons tunnel to proper location during the

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijleo.2015.12.119
0030-4026/© 2015 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
 N.G. Rao et al. / Optik 127 (2016) 4246–4249 4247

3.3. QCA clock system

The QCA circuits require a clock, not only to synchronize and

control information flow but also to provide the power to run the
circuit since there is no external source for powering the quantum
Fig. 1. QCA cell polarization. cells. In QCA, clocking can be accomplished by controlling the

Fig. 2. Majority gate.

Fig. 6. Layouts of AND gate and OR gate.

Fig. 3. Inverter.

Fig. 4. QCA wire.

clock transition [3]. The arrangement below gives the realization of

majority gate using QCA.
QCA cells A, B and C are input cells, and M is the output cell that is
polarized according to the polarization of the majority of the three
input cells. In this example, since two input QCA cells are polarized
Fig. 7. XOR gate graphical symbol and implementation.
to +1, the output cell is also polarized to +1. QCA cells can also be
used to construct wires. When an input is applied to the left input
cell, the binary information propagates from the left to the right.
When all cells in a wire settle down to their ground states, they
have the same polarization (Figs. 2–4).
There are two types of crossovers i.e. overlapping of wires.
Coplanar crossover uses single layer but involves usage of two cell
types termed regular and rotated, the multilayer crossover involves
more than one layer of cells. Here we use both coplanar and mul-
tilayer crossover for wire crossings since we can effectively cross
signals over another layer and the extra layers can be used as active
components of the circuit.

Fig. 5. QCA clock zones and QCA clock with four phases. Fig. 8. (a) QCA layout of XOR gate and (b) simulation result.
4248 N.G. Rao et al. / Optik 127 (2016) 4246–4249

potential barriers between quantum-dots. With the use of four

phases clocking scheme in controlling cells, QCA processes and for-
wards information within cells in an arranged timing scheme. Cells
are grouped into 4 zones so that the field influencing all the cells in
the zones will be the same. A zone cycles through 4 phases (Fig. 5).
In the switch phase electron tunneling is stopped as the inter dot
barrier between the cells gradually rises and QCA cell settles down
to one of the two ground polarization states as influenced by neigh-
bours, electron in the cell become localized. During the hold phase
the barrier is held high and no electron tunneling take place. The
cell is latched to current polarization state. During Release phase
inter-dot barrier is lowered, electrons becomes free and the cell
starts to lose its polarization, the binary states are released. Dur-
ing the relax phase, the barriers are low, the electrons are free to
tunnel and delocalize themselves i.e. s electrons get mobility [5].
The polarization state of a quantum cell is determined when it is in
switch phase by the polarization of neighbouring cells which are at
switch or hold phase.

3.4. QCA implementation

The AND and OR gates are realized by fixing the polarization to

one of the inputs of the majority gate to either P = −1 (logic “0”) or
P = 1 (logic “1”) (Fig. 6).

4. Implementation of code converters

The basic gates like and, or and the universal gates nand and nor
are required to design digital logic circuits. In addition of these gates
exclusive-or (xor) gates are also used to design digital circuits. The
xor gates are particularly useful in arithmetic operations as well

Table 1
Truth table for binary to gray code converter.

Binary value Gray code

0000 0000
0001 0001 Fig. 10. (a) Layout of binary to gray code converter and (b) simulation results.
0010 0011
0011 0010
0100 0110
0101 0111
0110 0101
0111 0100
1000 1100
1001 1101
1010 1111
1011 1110
1100 1010
1101 1011
1111 1000

Fig. 9. Logic circuit for binary to gray code converter. Fig. 11. (a) Layout of Gray to binary converter and (b) simulation results.
 N.G. Rao et al. / Optik 127 (2016) 4246–4249 4249

Table 2
Comparative study of proposed design with some recent design layouts.

No. of cells Area used (nm ↑ 2)

As in [4]
XOR 64 20,736
Binary to gray code 216 69,984
As in [6]
XOR 37 11,988
Binary to gray code 137 44,388
Proposed design
XOR 29 9,396 Chart 1. Comparison chart based on cell count.
Binary to gray code 127 41,148

as error-detection and correction circuits. These gates are usually

found as two-input gates.
We designed code converter circuits by considering a novel xor
design. The logic operation of XOR gate is given by Out = ab + ba
(Fig. 7).
An XOR gate can be trivially constructed from the basic gate
AND, OR and NOT gates. However, this approach requires five gates
of three different kinds (Fig. 8).
The proposed XOR design has only 29 cells with an area of
9396 nm2 which is much smaller compared to previous designs.
4.1. Gray code
Gray code, known as reflected binary code, expresses all the val-
ues as a sequence of 1s and 0s. Unlike binary code, each gray value
differs from the previous one by just a single bit.
Gray code finds important role in several practical applications,
particularly where multiple simultaneous bit changes would result
in errors. Gray codes can be calculated from binary codes that have
1 bit less than the proposed code. Gray codes are widely used to
facilitate error correction in digital communications such as digital
terrestrial television and some TV systems.
The logic circuit and truth table for 4-bit binary to gray code
converter is given in Table 1 (Fig. 9).
QCA layout of 4 bit binary to gray code converter and its simu-
lation result is shown in Fig. 10.
4.2. Gray to binary code converter
Logic circuit, QCA layout and simulation results for gray to binary
code converter is shown in Fig. 11.
5. Comparative study of proposed design with some recent
design layouts
In this paper we have designed 4 bit binary to gray and gray
to binary code converters. The novelty of this design besides the
parameters like area, usage efficiency, delay and complexity in
terms of number of cells is minimal compared to some proposed
designs in literature. A comparative study of various parameters of
proposed design is performed. Among these our proposed design
provides minimal complexity and better efficiency (Table 2 and
Chart 1).
6. Conclusion
In this paper, we have considered primitives in QCA and
have presented an efficient QCA design for a code convert-
ers. The paper provides the design, layout and simulation
results of code converters using novel QCA circuit. The proposed
implementation of circuits is simulated using QCA simulation
tools i.e. QCADesigner. The proposed design is found to be
efficient in terms of cell count, area usage. Main advantage
is, it requires a small simulation time and device execution
time. Using quantum-dots for implementation of digital cir-
cuitary it is possible to achieve miniaturization and high speed
processing.
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