Title
A High-performance Homogeneous Droplet Routing Technique for MEDA-based Biochips
Abstract
Recent advancement of microelectrode-dot-array (MEDA)-based architecture for digital microfluidic biochips has enabled a major enhancement in microfluidic operations for traditional lab-on-chip devices. One critical issue for MEDA-based biochips is the transportation of droplets. MEDA allows dynamic routing for droplets of different size. In this article, we propose a high-performance droplet routing technique for MEDA-based digital microfluidic biochips. First, we propose the basic concept of droplet movement strategy in MEDA-based design together with a definition of strictly shielded zones within the layout in MEDA architecture. Next, we propose transportation schemes of droplets for MEDA architecture under different blockage or crossover conditions and estimate route distances for each net in offline. Finally, a priority-based routing strategy combining various transportation schemes stated earlier has been proposed. Concurrent movement of each droplet is scheduled in a time-multiplexed manner. This poses critical challenges for parallel routing of individual droplets with optimal sharing of cells formulating a routing problem with higher complexity. The final compaction solution satisfies the timing constraint and improves fault tolerance. Simulations are carried out on standard benchmark circuits, namely, Benchmark suite I and Benchmark suite III. Experimental results show satisfactory improvements and prove a high degree of robustness for our proposed algorithm.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1145/3327965
ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems
Keywords
Field
DocType
Digital microfluidics,algorithms,bioassay execution,biochips,droplet routing,microelectrode dot arrays
Biochip,Computer science,Homogeneous,Electronic engineering,Computational science,Drop (liquid),MEDA
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
15
4
1550-4832
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Pampa Howladar111.09
Pranab Roy24714.15
Hafizur Rahaman336891.37