Design of a compact reversible binary coded decimal adder circuit

Reversible logic is an emerging research area and getting remarkable interests over the past few years. Interest is sparked in reversible logic by its applications in several technologies, such as quantum, optical, thermodynamics and adiabatic CMOS. This paper represents a synthesis method to realize reversible binary coded decimal adder circuit. Firstly, a reversible full-adder circuit has been proposed that shows the improvement over the two existing circuits. A lower bound is also proposed for the reversible full-adder circuit on the number of garbage outputs (bits needed for reversibility, but not required for the output of the circuit). After that, a final improvement is presented for the reversible full-adder circuit. Finally, a new reversible circuit has been proposed, namely reversible binary coded decimal (BCD) adder, which is the first ever proposed in reversible logic synthesis. In the way to propose reversible BCD adder, a reversible n-bits parallel adder circuit is also shown. Lower bounds for the reversible BCD adder in terms of number of garbage outputs and number of reversible gates are also shown. Delay has also been calculated for each circuit. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.