Design of efficient reversible logic-based binary and BCD adder circuits

Reversible logic is gaining significance in the context of emerging technologies such as quantum computing since reversible circuits do not lose information during computation and there is one-to-one mapping between the inputs and outputs. In this work, we present a class of new designs for reversible binary and BCD adder circuits. The proposed designs are primarily optimized for the number of ancilla inputs and the number of garbage outputs and are designed for possible best values for the quantum cost and delay. In reversible circuits, in addition to the primary inputs, some constant input bits are used to realize different logic functions which are referred to as ancilla inputs and are overheads that need to be reduced. Further, the garbage outputs which do not contribute to any useful computations but are needed to maintain reversibility are also overheads that need to be reduced in reversible designs. First, we propose two new designs for the reversible ripple carry adder: (i) one with no input carry c0 and no ancilla input bits, and (ii) one with input carry c0 and no ancilla input bits. The proposed reversible ripple carry adder designs with no ancilla input bits have less quantum cost and logic depth (delay) compared to their existing counterparts in the literature. In these designs, the quantum cost and delay are reduced by deriving designs based on the reversible Peres gate and the TR gate. Next, four new designs for the reversible BCD adder are presented based on the following two approaches: (i) the addition is performed in binary mode and correction is applied to convert to BCD when required through detection and correction, and (ii) the addition is performed in binary mode and the result is always converted using a binary to BCD converter. The proposed reversible binary and BCD adders can be applied in a wide variety of digital signal processing applications and constitute important design components of reversible computing.