A High-Performance Droplet Routing Algorithm for Digital Microfluidic Biochips

In this paper, we propose a high-performance droplet router for a digital microfluidic biochip (DMFB) design. Due to recent advancements in the biomicroelectromechanical system and its various applications to clinical, environmental, and military operations, the design complexity and the scale of a DMFB are expected to explode in the near future, thus requiring strong support from CAD as in conventional VLSI design. Among the multiple design stages of a DMFB, droplet routing, which schedules the movement of each droplet in a time-multiplexed manner, is one of the most critical design challenges due to high complexity as well as large impacts on performance. Our algorithm first routes a droplet with higher bypassibility which is less likely to block the movement of the others. When multiple droplets form a deadlock, our algorithm resolves it by backing off some droplets for concession. The final compaction step further enhances timing as well as fault tolerance by tuning each droplet mo...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: TCAD
• Authors: Minsik Cho, David Z. Pan
• Keywords: Algorithm, Design, Droplet, TCAD 2008