Serial Communication

Modified from Dr. Lam Phung’s Slides

Serial communication ─ The basics
• Computers transfer data in two ways: parallel and
serial.
– Parallel: Several data bits are transferred simultaneously,
e.g. to printers and hard disks.
– Serial: A single data bit is transferred at one time.
• Advantages of serial communication: longer distances,
easier to synchronize, fewer IO pins, and lower cost.
• Serial communication often requires
– Shift registers: convert a byte to serial bits and vice versa.
– Modems: modulate/demodulate serial bits to/from audio
tones.
 Synchronous versus asynchronous
• Synchronous serial communication
– The clocks of the sender and receiver are synchronized.
– A block of characters, enclosed by synchronizing bytes, is sent at
a time.
– Faster transfer and less overhead.
– Examples: serial peripheral interface (SPI) by Motorola, binary
synchronous communication (BISYNC) by IBM.
• Asynchronous serial communication
– The clocks of the sender and receiver are not synchronized.
– One character (8 or 7 bits) is sent at a time, enclosed between a
start bit and one or two stop bits. A parity bit may be included.
– Examples: RS-232 by Electronic Industries Alliance, USART of
ATmega16
Data framing examples
Serial communication terminology
• Baud rate: The number of bits sent per second
(bps). Strictly speaking, it is the number of signal
changes per second.
• Parity bit: A single bit for error checking, sent
with data bits to make the total number of 1’s
– even (for even parity) or
– odd (for odd parity).
• Start bit: to indicate the start of a character. Its
typical value is 0.
• Stop bit: to indicate the end of a character. Its
typical value is 1.
 The RS-232 standard
• The RS-232 (latest revision RS-232E) is a widely
used standard for serial interfacing.
• It covers four main aspects.
– Electrical: voltage level, rise and fall time, data rate,
distance.
– Functional: of each signal function
– Mechanical: number of pins, shape & dimension of
connectors.
– Procedural: sequence of events for transmitting data.
 The RS-232 standard
• RS-232 specifies the baud rate up to 20Kbps, and
the cable length up to 15m. In practice, it
supports up to 56Kbps & 30m of shielded cables.
• It defines 25-pin D connectors. In many cases, 9-
pin connectors are also used.
 RS-232 9-pin connector

• Data Terminal Equipment (DTE) essentially refers to the computer.

• Data Communication Equipment (DCE) essentially refers to a
remote device or modem.
• These terms are needed to explain the pin functions
 Modem connection

• RS-2322 was originally used with modems to connect two

PCs over the public phone lines.
• When computer A has data to send, it assert its RTS pin.
• Modem A will assert its CTS when it is ready to receive.
• Computer A transmits data through its TXD
 Null-modem connection

• RS-232 is now mainly used to connect a

microcontroller with PC or peripheral devices (e.g. GPS
receiver, infrared range finder, camera).
• This configuration is known as null-modem.
• Key idea:
– Connect pin TXD of a DTE with pin RXD of the other DTE.
– Wire other pins to support flow control
RS-232 interface and MAX232 chip
• Compared to TTL
computer
electronics, RS-232
interface uses
different voltage
levels.
• A level converter is
required between
RS-232 interface and
TXD/RXD pins of
microcontroller.
• MAX232 chip is often
used for this
purpose.
Serial comunnication - An example

• The sensor sends data via a serial interface to Bluetooth

transmitter.
• A Bluetooth receiver, connected to a PC, is configured as a
serial port
 Serial communication in AVR
• AVR provides three subsystems for serial
communication.
– Universal Synchronous & Asynchronous Receiver &
Transmitter (USART)
– Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI)
– Two-wire Serial Interface (TWI)
• USART:
– We focus on this subsystem in this lecture.
– Supports full-duplex mode between two devices.
– Typically used in asynchronous communication.
– Start bit and stop bit are used for each byte of data.
 Serial communication in AVR
• Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI)
– The receiver and transmitter
share a common clock line.
– Supports higher data rates.
– The transmitter is designated as
the master, the receiver as the
slave.
– Examples of devices using SPI:
liquid crystal display, high-speed
analogue-to-digital converter.
 Serial communication in AVR
• Two-wire Serial Interface (TWI):
– Connect several devices such as
microcontrollers and display
boards, using a two-wire bus.
– Up to 128 devices are supported.
– Each device has a unique address
and can exchange data with other
devices in a small network.
 Serial USART ─ An overview
• USART of the ATmega16
supports
– baud rates from 960bps to
115200bps,
– character size: 5 to 9 bits,
– 1 start bit,
– 1 or 2 stop bits,
– parity bit
(optional: even or odd parity).
• Common baud rates are
19200, 9600, 4800, 2400, and
1200 bps.
Serial USART ─ Block diagram
Serial USART ─ Hardware elements
• USART Clock Generator:
– to provide clock source.
– to set baud rate using UBRR register.
• USART Transmitter:
– to send a character through TxD pin.
– to parity bit, shift register.
• USART Receiver:
– handle start/stop bit framing,
– to receive a character through RxD pin.
– to perform the reverse operation of the transmitter.
• USART Registers:
– to configure, control, and monitor the serial USART.
 Serial USART ─ Three groups of
registers
• USART Baud Rate Registers
– UBRRH and UBRRL
• USART Control and Status Registers
– UCSRA
– UCSRB
– UCSRC
• USART Data Registers
– UDR
• Understanding these registers is essential in using
the serial port.
 USART Baud Rate Registers
• Two 8-bit registers together define the baud rate.

• Example: Find UBRR registers for baud rate of 1200bps, assuming

system clock is 1MHz.
– UBRR = 1000000/(16 × 1200) ─ 1 = 51 = 0x0033
– Therefore, UBRRH = 0x00 and UBRRL = 0x33
– C code
UBRRH = 0x00; UBRRL = 0x33;
USART Control and Status Register A
(UCSRA)
USART Control and Status Register B
(UCSRB)
 USART Data Register
• Register UDR is the buffer for characters sent or
received through the serial port.
• To start sending a character, we write it to UDR.

• To process a received character, we read it from UDR.

 Serial USART ─ Main tasks
• There are 4 main tasks in using the serial port.
– Initializing the serial port.
– Sending a character
– Receiving a character.
– Sending/receiving formatted strings
Initializing serial port
 Initializing serial port ─ Example
• Initialize serial port to baud rate 1200 bps, no
parity, 1 stop bit, 8 data bits. Assume a clock
speed of 1MHz.
Sending a character
 Sending a character ─ Example
• Write a C function to send a character through
serial port
Receiving a character
 Receiving a character ─ Example
• Write a C function to receive a character via
serial port
 Echo Program
• A simple program which will echo bytes
received on the AVR's USART interface.
• Use Null Modem cabling to PC
 Potential Pitfalls
• There are several “gotchas" when dealing with
the USART.
• First, make sure your AVR is running of a reliable,
known clock source with a low error percentage
at your chosen baud rate.
• New AVRs default to their internal oscillators until
their fuses are changed.
• The internal RC oscillator is of too low a tolerance
for use with the USART without external
calibration.
More Commonly used Baudrate
 Sending/receiving formatted strings
• In ANSI C, the header file <stdio.h> has two functions for
formatted strings: printf and scanf.
• Function printf sends a formatted string to the standard
output device, which is usually the video display.

• Function scanf reads a formatted string from the standard

input device, which is usually the keyboard
 Sending/receiving formatted strings
• Being able to send/receive formatted strings through a
serial port is useful in microcontroller applications.
• To this end, we configure the serial port as the
standard input and output devices.
• General steps:
1. Write two functions to send and receive a character via
serial port.
2. In main(), call fdevopen() to designate the two functions
as the handlers for standard output and input devices.
3. Use printf/scanf as usual. Formatted strings will be
sent/received via serial port.
Sending/receiving formatted strings ─
Example
 Debugging tool: Hyper Terminal
• Sending/receiving data through serial port is useful for
debugging a microcontroller program.
• A program for monitoring serial data is Hyper Terminal
(It is part of Windows XP, its 3 files can be copied to run
on Windows 7).
• Hyper Terminal is used to
– create a serial connection between the PC and the
microcontroller.
– send a text string to the microcontroller.
– receive a text string sent from the microcontroller.
• For example, let’s use Hyper Terminal to debug the
program echo.c
Using Interrupt on USART

Enable RX Interrupt and later Enable Global Interrupt Flag.

 ISR – Serial Comm
• ISR to deal with the serial reception.
 Populating ISR
• We want it to echo back the byte that is sent, so we'll move
our main loop code:

• since the ISR only fires when a byte is received, and only one
byte is sent after each reception, we can guarantee that both
checks are now redundant.
Complete Code