Implementation of multichannel uart on fifo technique & fpga

[Academic_Project Reports]

1.1 INTRODUCTION
Today, owing to availability of state-of-the-art microcontrollers and digital signal processors (DSPs), complex control algorithms can be easily implemented to attain the desired system performance. But in actual control systems, it is difficult to attain the expected result for various factors affect the control systems such as control algorithms itself, capability of controllers, capability of implement equipment and states of control circumstance. Except those factors, communication parameters of control systems including Baud Rate, BER (Bit Error Rate) and synchronization between sub-systems also engender great effect. In order to improve precision of control system and make good use of modern control algorithms, we should pay much more attention on communication in control systems.

The UART: What it is and how it works
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 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
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.
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 synchronizes”, if there is no data to transmit, the transmission line can be idle.


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