National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal ie@nitk.edu.in
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UART on FPGA

PROBLEM STATEMENT:

Design and implementation of hardware for UART data transmission on a Spartan-7 FPGA. The UART protocol is selected for its relative simplicity and popularity. The Spartan-7 FPGA board has a number of I/O pins that are suitable over a range of voltages and was hence suitable for this project.

PROPOSED SOLUTION:

The UART receiver and transmitter were implemented independently. We used 9600 BAUD rate for transmission of serial data and divided the system clock accordingly. We followed the Finite State Machine (FSM) approach to design both UART transmitter and receiver. These FSMs were then written in Verilog following RTL Design and implemented on the Spartan-7 FPGA board.

METHODOLOGY

UART exchanges text data in an American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) format in which each alphabetical character is encoded by 7 bits and transmitted as 8 data bits. For transmission the UART protocol wraps this 8 bit subword with a start bit in the least significant bit (LSB) and a stop bit in the most significant bit (MSB) resulting in a 10 bit word format.


Transmitter:
The function of the transmitter module is to convert the 8 bit serial data into the single bit data. In this module, when our load signal is high the data_in is stored into the holding register. The data in the holding register is shifted to the intermediate register with the start bit of zero and this intermediate register is of 9 bits. Once the shift signal is high the least significant bit of the intermediate register comes at the output of the transmitter and is served as the input to the receiver. When the entire data has been sent, the transmitter provides a parity bit which is served as the input to the receiver.


Receiver:
The function of the receiver module is to store the tx_serial i.e. the output of the transmitter which is of single bit into the intermediate register with the start bit as the least significant bit and collectively provide the 8 bit serial data. When the load signal is high it will get the start bit from the transmitter which assures that the original data is now being send by the transmitter. Once the shift signal is becomes high with no load signal, the data coming from the transmitter gets shifted into the intermediate register of the receiver and provides the 8 bit serial data which we have given as an input to the transmitter. The Baud rate generator is nothing but a frequency divider. In this UART we will apply the synchronized clock signal to both transmitter and the receiver. When the load signal is high it will get the start bit from the transmitter which assures that the original data is now being send by the transmitter. Once the shift signal becomes high with no load signal, the data coming from the transmitter gets shifted into the intermediate register of the receiver and provides the 8 bit serial data which we have given as an input to the transmitter.


RESULTS

The testbench created verified the proper functioning of the Verilog Code for both Transmitter and Receiver. The below graph shows the results of the testbench. A small delay between transmission of data and its reception was artificially introduced to simulate real-world implementations.

FUTURE WORK

The UART Transmitter and Receiver modules implemented on the FPGA must be tested with real peripherals to better understand the effect of noise and obtain Bit Error Rate. This UART implementation on the FPGA can be used to further integrate any other project implemented on the FPGA with external memory devices.

KEY LEARNINGS

Detailed understanding of the working of various data transmission protocols, not just UART. The inner functioning of an FPGA and ways to use its fundamental units to optimize designs. Design of digital systems using Verilog.

CONCLUSION

The FPGA is a versatile device with the potential to be a part of a number of projects. This project simply scratches the surface of its many uses and further projects involving the FPGA can integrate this project to allow the FPGA to interface with multiple peripherals.

TEAM

● Trinesh Reddy: trinesh.181ec108@nitk.edu.in
● Atulya Mahesh: atulya.181ec108@nitk.edu.in