Current-operated diode logic gates

The literature contains many articles on the design of voltage-operated diode logic gates. Perhaps the major disadvantage of this type of gate is the restriction of the design to two or three stages which does not, in general, allow realization of minimal networks or which alternately requires the insertion of a gain device to re-establish the voltage levels. This paper formulates the general realization procedures applicable to the synthesis of current-operated diode logic networks. The current-operated gate is essentially the dual of the voltage-operated gate; this relationship is established to substantiate the utilization of existing synthesis methods. Two distinctly different realization procedures are described, both equally general, and the choice is usually dictated by the nature of the specific transmission function. The Boolean operations of addition and multiplication (commonly referred to as OR and AND respectively) are more conveniently realized with the use of the “dual method.” The operation of sum modulo two (or function selection) is more economically synthesized using the “lattice method.” For a further discussion of the terms see the section on add and multiply, reference 1.