Pin-count and wire length optimization for electrowetting-on-dielectric chips: A metaheuristics-based routing algorithm

Abstract

Electrowetting-on-dielectric chips are gaining momentum as efficient alternatives to conventional biochemical laboratories due to their flexibility and low power consumption. In this chapter, we present a novel two-stage metaheuristic algorithm to optimize electrode interconnect routing for pin-constrained chips. The first stage models channel routing as a traveling salesman problem and solves it using the ant colony optimization algorithm. The second stage provides detailed wire routes over a grid model. The algorithm is benchmarked over a set of real-life chip specifications. On average, comparing our results to previous work, we obtain reductions of approximately 39% and 35% on pin-count and total wire length, respectively.