Design of Energy Efficient16-Bit Reversible ALU for Low Power IoT Applications
Gunjan Thakur, Srishti Keshri, Khushi Chaudhari · 2025
In today's digital era, the demand for compact and portable systems has drastically increased in applications such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and embedded devices. Low power consumption is critical for enhancing battery life and reducing heat generation. To achieve the same, an energy-efficient computational unit such as an Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) is required. The ALU acts as a fundamental component in all processing devices, including microprocessors, digital signal processors, and embedded systems. However, traditional ALUs built with irreversible logic gates face significant challenges related to power dissipation and heat generation, primarily because of the information loss during computations. Reversible logic, with its unique property of one-to-one mapping between inputs and outputs, offers a transformative approach by reducing energy dissipation and improving efficiency. In this paper, we propose a novel and optimized reversible 16-bit ALU design tailored for IoT and low-power applications. The proposed design integrates advanced reversible gates such as Peres, DKG, and COG, enabling efficient execution of operations such as addition, subtraction, AND, OR, and two's complement. The functionality of the proposed ALU has been verified with Verilog HDL and simulated using platforms such as Xilinx ISE. The simulation results validated the improved performance of the proposed ALU and reduced the area by 39.93% and power consumption by 4.85% concerning the conventional ALU. The obtained results highlight the potential of the proposed 16-bit ALU with reversible logic for energy-efficient computing systems.