Testing of Bridging Faults in AND-EXOR based Reversible Logic Circuits

Abstract: Reversible circuits find applications in many areas of Computer Science including Quantum Computation. This paper examines the testability of an important subclass of reversible logic circuits that are composed of k-wire controlled NOT (k-CNOT with k >/- 1) gates. A reversible k-CNOT gate can be implemented using an irreversible k-input AND gate and an EXOR gate. A reversible k-CNOT circuit where each k-CNOT gate is realized using irreversible k-input AND and EXOR gate, has been considered. One of the most commonly used Single Bridging Fault model (both wired-AND and wired-OR) has been assumed to be type of fault for such circuits. It has been shown that an (n+p)-input AND-EXOR based reversible logic circuit with p observable outputs, can be tested for single bridging faults (SBF) using (3n + \lefthalfcap log2p \righthalfcap + 2) tests.