NAND/NOR gate polymorphism in low temperature environment

Abstract

The fundamental aspect behind this paper is focused on behaviour of polymorphic digital circuits in potentially harsh operating environment. The area of polymorphic electronics takes and an advantage of inherently built-in features that open up the possibility for on-the-fly adjustment of a particular circuit function with respect to the environment. The most prevalent benefit here is connected with the fact that space-efficient circuit implementation can be achieved due to the adoption of polymorphic principles and, thus, eliminate the need for an additional function change controller. The experimental setup was based around reconfigurable polymorphic chip REPOMO32, which is primarily designed to be configured (in addition to the configuration bit stream) by means of using the level of power supply voltage (Vdd), and carrier board with all necessary capabilities for temperature measurement up to -40C boundary and its response analysis. Experiments clearly indicate that polymorphic gates in the chip can be easily controlled not only by Vdd, but also by temperature. The obtained results also prove that the physical design of the REPOMO32 chip is robust enough under wide range f operating temperature.