On designing a ternary reversible circuit for online testability

Reversible logic has the potential to solve the energy efficiency problems that are beginning to create roadblocks in the continued advancement of today's computer systems. Multiple-valued versions of reversible logic can provide even further advantages, but the current literature contains very little work on testability of such designs. This paper details work on designing an online testable block for ternary reversible logic. We build on earlier work that introduced the basic design, and provide some improvements and modifications. This block implements most ternary logic operations and is capable of testing the reversible ternary network in real time (online). The block is built entirely of reversible building blocks, thus the block is itself reversible and so multiple such blocks can be combined to construct complete, testable, ternary reversible circuits.