Ant Colony Direct Cover Technique for Multi-Level Synthesis of Multiple-Valued Logic Functions

−A number of heuristic algorithms for producing near minimal sum-of products realization of multiple valued logic (MVL) functions have been introduced in the literature. In particular, the direct cover (DC) algorithms have been used effectively for synthesis of MVL functions for implementation using 2-level programmable logic arrays (PLAs). In this paper, a hybrid ant colony (ACO) algorithm and DC technique to synthesize MVL functions is introduced. The results are compared to other techniques found in the literature. A benchmark set of 50000 randomly generated 2-varaible 4valued functions is used to test the results obtained using the proposed algorithm. It is shown that the results obtained using the introduced hybrid ACO-DC technique are superior to those produced by existing techniques in terms of the average number of product terms needed for synthesis of a given MVL function. Index Terms−Ant Colony, Direct Cover Algorithms, Multiple-Valued Logic, Functional Synthesis.