An efficient and energy-aware design of a novel nano-scale reversible adder using a quantum-based platform

Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is a domain coupling nano-technology that has drawn significant attention for less power consumption, area, and design overhead. It is able to achieve a high speed over the CMOS technology. Recently, the tendency to design reversible circuits has been expanding because of the reduction in energy dissipation. Hence, the QCA is a crucial candidate for reversible circuits in nano-technology. On the other hand, the addition operator is also considered one of the primary operations in digital and analog circuits due to its wide applications in digital signal processing and computer arithmetic operations. Accordingly, full-adders have become popular and extensively solve mathematical problems more efficiently and faster. They are one of the essential fundamental circuits in most digital processing circuits. Therefore, this article first suggests a novel reversible block called the RF-adder block. Then, an effective reversible adder design is proposed using the recommended reversible RF-adder block. The QCAPro and QCADesigner 2.0.3 tools were employed to assess the effectiveness of the suggested reversible full-adder. The outcomes of energy dissipation for the proposed circuit compared to the best previous structure at three different tunneling energy levels indicate a reduction in the power consumption by 45.55%, 38.82%, and 34.62%, respectively.