https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-03134-3
Regular Article
Impact of different types of input wire on defect-tolerance of QCA majority voter
1
Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer, Birjand University, Birjand, Iran
2
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
3
School of Computer Science, Institute for Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran, Iran
4
Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
Received:
24
November
2021
Accepted:
1
August
2022
Published online:
27
August
2022
Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA) as an emerging nanotechnology is highly susceptible to the various types of defects occurring during the manufacturing process. Many defects fall into the category of delay defects, which change the signal propagation time along the sensitized paths, but typically cannot affect the correct operation of the device. In this work, we simulated the defect-tolerance of a 3-input QCA majority voter (QM) considering four types of input wires against four types of delay defects. Moreover, we assessed the effect of wider wires on the robustness of QM. To run the required simulations, we applied a recently reported delay-based model to determine the impact of defects and small-delay defects (SDDs) on the propagation delay of signals between inputs and output of QM. The measured delay is corresponding to the size of a possible defect or SDD. Accordingly, for each wire, we injected the selected defect into the input wire of the underlined QM and simulated the behavior of the device via the QCADesigner simulator. The obtained results showed the sensibility of QM to the different types of delay defects due to different wire types. They also revealed that for all types of wires, the wider wire can make the device more robust. These results give important feedback to improve the design and manufacturing process and can apply for other objectives such as circuit testing.
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