Application of Karnaugh maps to Maitra cascades

Abstract

A Maitra cascade, as shown in Fig. 8, is a one dimensional cellular array whose cells have only one output and two inputs. At the output of the last cell the function is performed whose independent variables are introduced at the free inputs of the cascade cells. There are two different kinds of Maitra cascades according to whether a different binary variable is introduced or not at each independent input. In the first case the cascade is an irredundant one, in the second it is said to be redundant. The most important results about the synthesis of Maitra cascade are given in Refs. 1--5. In Ref. 6 it is proved that a sufficient condition for a cellular cascade to reach its optimal synthesis possibility is that every cell can perform the set of five functions shown in Fig. 1a, 1b, 1c.