CS578: Internet of Things

UART
Serial Communication

Dr. Manas Khatua

Assistant Professor, Dept. of CSE, IIT Guwahati
E-mail: [email protected]

“We suffer as a result of our own actions; it is unfair to blame anybody for it.” – Ma Sarada Devi
UART
 UART stands for Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter
• one of the earliest modes of communication applied to computers
• its origin goes back at least as far as the 1960s
• called ‘universal’ because
• its parameters - speed, data size and so on - are not fixed, and can be configured, however,
both side should agree

• It is used for asynchronous serial communication

• Serial communication stands for the process of sending data one bit at a time sequentially
• Asynchronous means there is no clock signalling line to synchronize, and transmitter and
receiver might turn on at different time instant
• Two devices do not necessarily share a common clock.
• Both systems might for example agree on some fixed Baud rate.

 Baud rate is a measure of the speed of data transfer, expressed as symbol per sec.
 Also represented by bit per second (bps).
 Bit Rate = Baud rate x the number of bit per baud
 Common baud rates: 9600, 4800, 19200, 38400, etc.

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Clock based Synchronization

Source: Google Image

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Synchronization in UART
 This synchronisation is done in the form of a high to low (or low to high)
transition on the data line.
 The line will ideally high in idle
 then drop low when transmission starts.
 This transition acts to synchronise the timing between both devices.
 The receiver then knows to clock in enough cycles of data based on its baud clock.

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Synchronization in UART
 This synchronisation is done in the form of a high to low (or low to high)
transition on the data line.
 The line will ideally high in idle
 then drop low when transmission starts.
 This transition acts to synchronise the timing between both devices.
 The receiver then knows to clock in enough cycles of data based on its baud clock.

 However, there are two problems with this scheme:

 The single high to low transition is not enough to synchronise timing over a long
period of time.
 So, they need periodic re-synchronisation.
 If the first bit of data it wants to send is also represented by a high level, then there
are no transition, and vice-versa.
 So, they need some way to distinguish the first bit.

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Synchronization in UART
 There are two problems with the data line based synchronization scheme:
 The single high to low transition is not enough to synchronise timing over a long period of time.
 So, they need periodic re-synchronisation.
 If the first bit of data it wants to send is also represented by a high level, then there are no
transition, and vice-versa.
 So, they need some way to distinguish the first bit.

Both of these problems are solved in UART by using start and stop bits.

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UART Communication
 UART Communication
• Communication may be simplex, full duplex, or half duplex

• Simplex: One direction only, transmitter to receiver

• Half Duplex: Devices take turns transmitting and receiving

• Full Duplex: Devices can send and receive at the same time

• Data format and transmission speed are configurable

• Communication goes through the two independent lines/wires

• TX (transmission)

• RX (reception).

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Data Framing

Start Bit:
• The UART transmission line is normally held at a high voltage level when idle i.e. it is not transmitting
data
• It start bit is set to logic low as it is used to signal the receiver that a new framing is coming.

Data Frame:
• If one parity bit is used, then next 5-8 bits carry the “data bits” (information). Otherwise, data bits
can be 5-9 bits.
• Certainly, the standard data size is 8-bit, but other sizes have their uses.
• A 7-bit data chunk can be more efficient than 8, especially if you're just transferring 7-bit ASCII
characters.

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Cont…

Parity:
• It is an optional bit.
• It is used to detect the wrong data packets, i.e. error during transmission
• Two type of parity bit used: even parity, odd parity.
• Even parity:
• If the count of bits with value 1 is odd, the parity bit value is set to 1, making the total
count of occurrences of 1s in the whole set (including the parity bit) an even number.
• If the count of 1s in a given set of bits is already even, the parity bit's value is 0.
• Odd parity:
• the coding is reverse of even parity.

Stop Bits:
• To signal the end of the data packet, the sending UART drives the data transmission line from a low
voltage to a high voltage.

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 Steps of UART Communication
1. The transmitting UART receives data in parallel from the data bus:

2. The transmitting UART adds the start bit, (even) parity bit, and stop bit(s) to the data frame:
Cont…
3. The entire packet is sent serially from the transmitting UART to the receiving UART. In most
cases, the data is sent with the least significant bit first.

The receiving UART samples the data line at the pre-configured baud rate:

4. The receiving UART discards the start bit, parity bit, and stop bit from the data frame:
Cont…
5. The receiving UART converts the serial data back into parallel and transfers it to the data bus
on the receiving end:

Note:
• For communication between the devices, both of them have to have same baud rate
• The baud rate between the transmitting and receiving UARTs can only differ by max 10%.
Use of Start bit
As time matters with asynchronous signals, it is needed
to send a "LISTEN UP" signal in the form of start bit.

Without any time reference, they all

look alike as a voltage signal.

Source: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/335695/why-the-start-bit-and-the-stop-bits-are-necessary

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Use of Stop bits
• In the first figure, no
transition for start bit !

• So, the stop bit ensures the

line goes back to the idle
state at the end of the
transmission.

• It also gives the receiver a

time window to handle the
bytes just received, reset,
and get ready to listen for
the next start bit.

• Note: Start & Stop bits are

used for synchronization, but
not to define the data length

Source: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/335695/why-the-start-bit-and-the-stop-bits-are-necessary

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9600 8N1 (an example)
• 9600 8N1 – 9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, and 1 stop bit - is one of the more commonly used
serial protocols.

• A device transmitting the ASCII characters 'O' and 'K' would have to create two packets of data.
• The ASCII value of O (that's uppercase) is 79, which breaks down into an 8-bit binary value of
01001111, while K's binary value is 01001011

• Since we're transferring at 9600 bps, the time spent holding each of those bits high or low is
1/(9600 bps) or 104 µs per bit.
• For every byte of data transmitted, there are actually 10 bits being sent: a start bit, 8 data bits, and
a stop bit.
• So, at 9600 bps, we're actually sending 9600 bits per second or 960 (9600/10) bytes per second.

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Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages:
1) Well documented and widely used method.

2) Only uses two wires

3) No clock signal is necessary

4) Has a parity bit to allow for error checking

5) The structure of the data packet can be changed as long as both sides are set up for it.

Disadvantages:
1) The size of the dataframe is limited to max 9 bits.

2) Doesn’t support multiple master-slave systems

3) The baud rate of each UART must be with 10% of each other.

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Applications and Standards
 UART is normally used in microcontrollers for exact requirements

 Today, UART is being used in many applications like

 GPS Receivers,
 Bluetooth Modules,
 GSM and GPRS Modems,
 Wireless Communication Systems,
 RFID based applications
 etc.

 The first of the serial data transmission standards was RS232, or more correctly RS-232 or
COM-port. This was developed in 1962.

 There are more recent standards which allow high speed data transmission along with multiple
transmitters and receivers

 e.g. USB, DP, HDMI, DDR, Ethernet, PCI Express, SAS/SATA, Thunderbolt, etc.
Lessons Learned

 What is serial communication

 What is asynchronous communication

 UART communication mechanism

 Pros and Cons of UART communication

 Applications of UART communication

 Thanks!

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