Exact Synthesis of Ternary Reversible Functions Using Ternary Toffoli Gates

Abstract

Realization of logic functions using ternary reversible logic is known to requirelesser number of lines as compared to conventionalbinary reversible logic. This aspect of ternary reversible logic has motivated researchers to explore various synthesis approaches in the past. Existing synthesis methods require additional lines (called ancilla lines)for synthesis, which is expensive from the quantum implementation pointof view. There is no reported work for ternary reversible logic synthesisthat require the minimum possible number of gates and also lines. Thisclass of synthesis methods is called exact synthesis. In this paper two exact synthesis methods for ternary reversible logic have been proposed for the first time, one based on booleansatisfiability (SAT) and the other based on level-constrained heuristic search technique. A permutation representing a reversible ternary truth table is given as input, and a reversible circuit consisting ofgeneralized ternary Toffoli gates that implements the permutationis obtained as output. Experimental studies have been carried out on various randomly generatedternary reversible functions.