The UART: What it is and how it works
Copyright © 1996 Frank Durda IV <uhclem@FreeBSD.org>, All Rights Reserved. 13 January 1996.
The Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART) controller is the key component of the serial communications subsystem of a computer. The UART takes bytes of data and transmits the individual bits in a sequential fashion. At the destination, a second UART re-assembles the bits into complete bytes.
Serial transmission is commonly used with modems and for non-networked communication between computers, terminals and other devices.
There are two primary forms of serial transmission: Synchronous and Asynchronous. Depending on the modes that are supported by the hardware, the name of the communication sub-system will usually include a A if it supports Asynchronous communications, and a S if it supports Synchronous communications. Both forms are described below.
Some common acronyms are:
UART Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter
USART Universal Synchronous-Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter
1.1 Synchronous Serial Transmission
Synchronous serial transmission requires that the sender and receiver share a clock with one another, or that the sender provide a strobe or other timing signal so that the receiver knows when to "read" the next bit of the data. In most forms of serial Synchronous communication, if there is no data available at a given instant to transmit, a fill character must be sent instead so that data is always being transmitted. Synchronous communication is usually more efficient because only data bits are transmitted between sender and receiver, and synchronous communication can be more costly if extra wiring and circuits are required to share a clock signal between the sender and receiver.
A form of Synchronous transmission is used with printers and fixed disk devices in that the data is sent on one set of wires while a clock or strobe is sent on a different wire. Printers and fixed disk devices are not normally serial devices because most fixed disk interface standards send an entire word of data for each clock or strobe signal by using a separate wire for each bit of the word. In the PC industry, these are known as Parallel devices.
The standard serial communications hardware in the PC does not support Synchronous operations. This mode is described here for comparison purposes only.
1.2 Asynchronous Serial Transmission
Asynchronous transmission allows data to be transmitted without the sender having to send a clock signal to the receiver. Instead, the sender and receiver must agree on timing parameters in advance and special bits are added to each word which are used to synchronize the sending and receiving units.
When a word is given to the UART for Asynchronous transmissions, a bit called the "Start Bit" is added to the beginning of each word that is to be transmitted. The Start Bit is used to alert the receiver that a word of data is about to be sent, and to force the clock in the receiver into synchronization with the clock in the transmitter. These two clocks must be accurate enough to not have the frequency drift by more than 10% during the transmission of the remaining bits in the word. (This requirement was set in the days of mechanical teleprinters and is easily met by modern electronic equipment.)
After the Start Bit, the individual bits of the word of data are sent, with the Least Significant Bit (LSB) being sent first. Each bit in the transmission is transmitted for exactly the same amount of time as all of the other bits, and the receiver "looks" at the wire at approximately halfway through the period assigned to each bit to determine if the bit is a 1 or a 0. For example, if it takes two seconds to send each bit, the receiver will examine the signal to determine if it is a 1 or a 0 after one second has passed, then it will wait two seconds and then examine the value of the next bit, and so on.
The sender does not know when the receiver has "looked" at the value of the bit. The sender only knows when the clock says to begin transmitting the next bit of the word.
When the entire data word has been sent, the transmitter may add a Parity Bit that the transmitter generates. The Parity Bit may be used by the receiver to perform simple error checking. Then at least one Stop Bit is sent by the transmitter.
When the receiver has received all of the bits in the data word, it may check for the Parity Bits (both sender and receiver must agree on whether a Parity Bit is to be used), and then the receiver looks for a Stop Bit. If the Stop Bit does not appear when it is supposed to, the UART considers the entire word to be garbled and will report a Framing Error to the host processor when the data word is read. The usual cause of a Framing Error is that the sender and receiver clocks were not running at the same speed, or that the signal was interrupted.
Regardless of whether the data was received correctly or not, the UART automatically discards the Start, Parity and Stop bits. If the sender and receiver are configured identically, these bits are not passed to the host.
If another word is ready for transmission, the Start Bit for the new word can be sent as soon as the Stop Bit for the previous word has been sent.
Because asynchronous data is "self synchronizing", if there is no data to transmit, the transmission line can be idle.
In addition to the basic job of converting data from parallel to serial for transmission and from serial to parallel on reception, a UART will usually provide additional circuits for signals that can be used to indicate the state of the transmission media, and to regulate the flow of data in the event that the remote device is not prepared to accept more data. For example, when the device connected to the UART is a modem, the modem may report the presence of a carrier on the phone line while the computer may be able to instruct the modem to reset itself or to not take calls by raising or lowering one more of these extra signals. The function of each of these additional signals is defined in the EIA RS232-C standard.
1.4 The RS232-C and V.24 Standards
In most computer systems, the UART is connected to circuitry that generates signals that comply with the EIA RS232-C specification. There is also a CCITT standard named V.24 that mirrors the specifications included in RS232-C.
1.4.1 RS232-C Bit Assignments (Marks and Spaces)
In RS232-C, a value of 1 is called a Mark and a value of 0 is called a Space. When a communication line is idle, the line is said to be "Marking", or transmitting continuous 1 values.
The Start bit always has a value of 0 (a Space). The Stop Bit always has a value of 1 (a Mark). This means that there will always be a Mark (1) to Space (0) transition on the line at the start of every word, even when multiple word are transmitted back to back. This guarantees that sender and receiver can resynchronize their clocks regardless of the content of the data bits that are being transmitted.
The idle time between Stop and Start bits does not have to be an exact multiple (including zero) of the bit rate of the communication link, but most UARTs are designed this way for simplicity.
In RS232-C, the "Marking" signal (a 1) is represented by a voltage between -2 VDC and -12 VDC, and a "Spacing" signal (a 0) is represented by a voltage between 0 and +12 VDC. The transmitter is supposed to send +12 VDC or -12 VDC, and the receiver is supposed to allow for some voltage loss in long cables. Some transmitters in low power devices (like portable computers) sometimes use only +5 VDC and -5 VDC, but these values are still acceptable to a RS232-C receiver, provided that the cable lengths are short.
RS232-C also specifies a signal called a Break, which is caused by sending continuous Spacing values (no Start or Stop bits). When there is no electricity present on the data circuit, the line is considered to be sending Break.
The Break signal must be of a duration longer than the time it takes to send a complete byte plus Start, Stop and Parity bits. Most UARTs can distinguish between a Framing Error and a Break, but if the UART cannot do this, the Framing Error detection can be used to identify Breaks.
In the days of teleprinters, when numerous printers around the country were wired in series (such as news services), any unit could cause a Break by temporarily opening the entire circuit so that no current flowed. This was used to allow a location with urgent news to interrupt some other location that was currently sending information.
In modern systems there are two types of Break signals. If the Break is longer than 1.6 seconds, it is considered a "Modem Break", and some modems can be programmed to terminate the conversation and go on-hook or enter the modems' command mode when the modem detects this signal. If the Break is smaller than 1.6 seconds, it signifies a Data Break and it is up to the remote computer to respond to this signal. Sometimes this form of Break is used as an Attention or Interrupt signal and sometimes is accepted as a substitute for the ASCII CONTROL-C character.
Marks and Spaces are also equivalent to "Holes" and "No Holes" in paper tape systems.
Note: Breaks cannot be generated from paper tape or from any other byte value, since bytes are always sent with Start and Stop bit. The UART is usually capable of generating the continuous Spacing signal in response to a special command from the host processor.
1.4.3 RS232-C DTE and DCE Devices
The RS232-C specification defines two types of equipment: the Data Terminal Equipment (DTE) and the Data Carrier Equipment (DCE). Usually, the DTE device is the terminal (or computer), and the DCE is a modem. Across the phone line at the other end of a conversation, the receiving modem is also a DCE device and the computer that is connected to that modem is a DTE device. The DCE device receives signals on the pins that the DTE device transmits on, and vice versa.
When two devices that are both DTE or both DCE must be connected together without a modem or a similar media translater between them, a NULL modem must be used. The NULL modem electrically re-arranges the cabling so that the transmitter output is connected to the receiver input on the other device, and vice versa. Similar translations are performed on all of the control signals so that each device will see what it thinks are DCE (or DTE) signals from the other device.
The number of signals generated by the DTE and DCE devices are not symmetrical. The DTE device generates fewer signals for the DCE device than the DTE device receives from the DCE.
The EIA RS232-C specification (and the ITU equivalent, V.24) calls for a twenty-five pin connector (usually a DB25) and defines the purpose of most of the pins in that connector.
In the IBM Personal Computer and similar systems, a subset of RS232-C signals are provided via nine pin connectors (DB9). The signals that are not included on the PC connector deal mainly with synchronous operation, and this transmission mode is not supported by the UART that IBM selected for use in the IBM PC.
Depending on the computer manufacturer, a DB25, a DB9, or both types of connector may be used for RS232-C communications. (The IBM PC also uses a DB25 connector for the parallel printer interface which causes some confusion.)
Below is a table of the RS232-C signal assignments in the DB25 and DB9 connectors.
Baud is a measurement of transmission speed in asynchronous communication. Because of advances in modem communication technology, this term is frequently misused when describing the data rates in newer devices.
Traditionally, a Baud Rate represents the number of bits that are actually being sent over the media, not the amount of data that is actually moved from one DTE device to the other. The Baud count includes the overhead bits Start, Stop and Parity that are generated by the sending UART and removed by the receiving UART. This means that seven-bit words of data actually take 10 bits to be completely transmitted. Therefore, a modem capable of moving 300 bits per second from one place to another can normally only move 30 7-bit words if Parity is used and one Start and Stop bit are present.
If 8-bit data words are used and Parity bits are also used, the data rate falls to 27.27 words per second, because it now takes 11 bits to send the eight-bit words, and the modem still only sends 300 bits per second.
The formula for converting bytes per second into a baud rate and vice versa was simple until error-correcting modems came along. These modems receive the serial stream of bits from the UART in the host computer (even when internal modems are used the data is still frequently serialized) and converts the bits back into bytes. These bytes are then combined into packets and sent over the phone line using a Synchronous transmission method. This means that the Stop, Start, and Parity bits added by the UART in the DTE (the computer) were removed by the modem before transmission by the sending modem. When these bytes are received by the remote modem, the remote modem adds Start, Stop and Parity bits to the words, converts them to a serial format and then sends them to the receiving UART in the remote computer, who then strips the Start, Stop and Parity bits.
The reason all these extra conversions are done is so that the two modems can perform error correction, which means that the receiving modem is able to ask the sending modem to resend a block of data that was not received with the correct checksum. This checking is handled by the modems, and the DTE devices are usually unaware that the process is occurring.
By striping the Start, Stop and Parity bits, the additional bits of data that the two modems must share between themselves to perform error-correction are mostly concealed from the effective transmission rate seen by the sending and receiving DTE equipment. For example, if a modem sends ten 7-bit words to another modem without including the Start, Stop and Parity bits, the sending modem will be able to add 30 bits of its own information that the receiving modem can use to do error-correction without impacting the transmission speed of the real data.
The use of the term Baud is further confused by modems that perform compression. A single 8-bit word passed over the telephone line might represent a dozen words that were transmitted to the sending modem. The receiving modem will expand the data back to its original content and pass that data to the receiving DTE.
Modern modems also include buffers that allow the rate that bits move across the phone line (DCE to DCE) to be a different speed than the speed that the bits move between the DTE and DCE on both ends of the conversation. Normally the speed between the DTE and DCE is higher than the DCE to DCE speed because of the use of compression by the modems.
Because the number of bits needed to describe a byte varied during the trip between the two machines plus the differing bits-per-seconds speeds that are used present on the DTE-DCE and DCE-DCE links, the usage of the term Baud to describe the overall communication speed causes problems and can misrepresent the true transmission speed. So Bits Per Second (bps) is the correct term to use to describe the transmission rate seen at the DCE to DCE interface and Baud or Bits Per Second are acceptable terms to use when a connection is made between two systems with a wired connection, or if a modem is in use that is not performing error-correction or compression.
Modern high speed modems (2400, 9600, 14,400, and 19,200bps) in reality still operate at or below 2400 baud, or more accurately, 2400 Symbols per second. High speed modem are able to encode more bits of data into each Symbol using a technique called Constellation Stuffing, which is why the effective bits per second rate of the modem is higher, but the modem continues to operate within the limited audio bandwidth that the telephone system provides. Modems operating at 28,800 and higher speeds have variable Symbol rates, but the technique is the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment