Low-voltage adders for power-efficient arithmetic circuits

This paper presents the results of a study of alternative adder architectures, a full-swing Bipolar Double Pass-Transistor adder, a new full-swing BiNMOS adder, a reduced-swing Bipolar Double Pass-Transistor adder and a reduced-swing Double Pass-Transistor BiNMOS adder, that outperform a standard CMOS adder up to three times in power-efficiency at supply voltages 1.5–3 V. The Bipolar Double Pass-Transistor adder is more power-efficient than a standard CMOS adder even at a fanout of 1. All remaining proposed adders have a lower crossover capacitance with a standard CMOS adder than the previously reported low-voltage adders. Circuits were designed and fabricated in 0.8 μm BiCMOS technology.