Designing Cellular Automata Structures using Quantum-dot Cellular Automata

Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA) is a promising, emerging nanotechnology based on single electron effects in quantum dots and molecules. While many logic implementations based on QCA devices have been proposed in literature [6, 7, 8], the inherent cellular structure of QCA cells make it a natural candidate for Cellular Automata (CA) implementation. CA offers regularity and modularity to the design which helps to mitigate the susceptibility of QCA cells to manufacturing defects. Also, pipelining is an inherent property of QCA computation which is essential for CA operation. This work is first reported work to the best of our knowledge, towards realization of CA structures using QCA logic cells. We give detailed schematic of some typical CA rules implemented using QCA. Also, QCA implementation of a Programmable Cellular Automata (PCA) has been developed. A pseudorandom sequence generator is developed using the proposed PCA.