Asynchronous and Synchronous Communication

Serial data transfers depend on accurate timing in order to differentiate bits in the data stream. This timing can be handled in one of two ways: asynchronously or synchronously. In asynchronous communication, the scope of the timing is a single byte. In synchronous communication, the timing scope comprises one or more blocks of bytes. The terms asynchronous and synchronous are slightly misleading, because both kinds of communication require synchronization between the sender and receiver.

Asynchronous communication is the prevailing standard in the personal computer industry, both because it is easier to implement and because it has the unique advantage that bytes can be sent whenever they are ready, as opposed to waiting for blocks of data to accumulate.

Asynchronous means "no synchronization", and thus does not require sending and receiving idle characters. However, the beginning and end of each byte of data must be identified by start and stop bits. The start bit indicates when the data byte is about to begin and the stop bit signals when it ends. The requirement to send these additional two bits cause asynchronous communications to be slightly slower than synchronous however it has the advantage that the processor does not have to deal with the additional idle characters.


IMPORTANT:
Do not confuse asynchronous communication with asynchronous execution. Asynchronous communication is a protocol for coordinating serial data transfers. Asynchronous execution refers to the capability of a device driver to carry out background processing. The Serial Driver supports both asynchronous communication and asynchronous execution. The Serial Driver does not support synchronous communication protocols. However, it does support synchronous clocking supplied by an external device.

2.1Serial Port Devices

2.2 Bi-Directional Communication

2.3 Synchronous Communication


2.3.1 Synchronous Data and Clock


2.3.2 Synchronous Transmission


2.3.3 Character Oriented Protocol (COP)


2.3.4 Binary Synchronous Message Block


Serial Port Devices
The following is a listing of various hardware components, which can be purchased and used with your Serial port.
Mouse - One of the most commonly used devices for serial ports, usually used with computers with no PS/2 Ports or laptop computers.
Modem - Another commonly used device for serial ports. Used commonly with older computers however is also commonly used with computers for its ease of use.
Network - One of the original uses of the serial port, which allowed two computers to connect together and allow large files to be transferred between the two.
Printer - Today is not commonly used device for serial ports (not applicable to the DB25 or Parallel Port). However was frequently used with older printers and plotters.


The serial port on your PC is a full-duplex device meaning that it can send and receive data at the same time. In order to be able to do this, it uses separate lines for transmitting and receiving data. Some types of serial devices support only one-way communications and therefore use only two wires in the cable - the transmit line and the signal ground.


Synchronous Data and Clock
When Modem Is use to send data, the clock it combined with the data to modulate an analog signal. The clock is derived the analog signal that is receive and used to decode the synchronous data stream. If the Modem is in synchronous mode, the clock is often output to the modem serial port. See figure below.

If the modem is in synchronous mode, the clock that is derive from receive analog signal is used to decode the data, but is not output on the modem serial port.

 

Synchronous Transmission
In synchronous transmission, grouping characters together, and doing away with the start achieve greater efficiency and stop bits for each character. We still envelop the information in a similar way as before, but this time we send more characters between the start and end sequences. In addition, the start and stop bits are replaced with a new format that permits greater flexibility. An extra ending sequence is added to perform error checking.

There are variations of synchronous transmission, which are split into two groups, namely character orientated and bit orientated. In character orientated, information is encoded as characters. In bit orientated, information is encoded using bits or combinations of bits, and is thus more complex than the character orientated version. Binary synchronous is an example of character orientated, and High Level Data Link Control (HDLC) is an example of bit orientated.

In asynchronous transmission, if there was no data to transmit, nothing was sent. We relied on the start bit to start the motor and thus begin the preparation to decode the incoming character. However, in synchronous transmission, because the start bit has been dropped, the receiver must be kept in a state of readiness. This is achieved by sending a special code by the transmitter whenever it has no data to send.

In bit-orientated protocols, the line idle state is changed to 7E, which synchronizes the receiver to the sender. The start and stop bits are removed, and each character is combined with others into a data packet.

User data is prefixed with a header field, and suffixed with a trailer field, which includes a checksum value (used by the receiver to check for errors in sending).

The header field is used to convey address information (sender and receiver), packet type and control data. The data field contains the users data (if it can't fit in a single packet, then use multiple packets and number them). Generally, it has a fixed size. The tail field contains checksum information, which the receiver uses to check whether the packet was corrupted during transmission.


Character Orientated Protocols (COP)
In character-orientated protocols, each character has significance, In other words, when a character arrives at the receiver, the character has two meanings, it's either a data byte, or it's a control byte (which is used as information signals between the sender and receiver). The main COP in use today is known as BI-SYNC, or binary synchronous.

Communication takes the form of a handshake between the sender and receiver. Communication of a message from sender to receiver takes the following format,

As you can see, this is a HALF-DUPLEX (which means only one side talks at once) method of communication. Long messages are broken up into a series of smaller data packets, and transmitted one at a time across the link. Each packet is acknowledged before the next packet is transmitted.
If a packet is not acknowledged, the sender will time out and then retransmit the packet. If the receiver acknowledges the packet, the sender sends the next packet and so on until the entire message has been sent. If a packet is received and contains errors, the receiver will send a negative acknowledge, which requests the sender to send it again.

Data bytes contain data according to the ASCII code (for text), or simply a value between 0-255 for binary data. Control bytes determine the behavior of the communication link, and are used for a range of different purposes.


Binary Synchronous Message Blocks
Messages are sent in blocks. Message blocks have the following format,

Each message block can contain up to theree parts,
  • An optonal header
  • The text
  • A trailer
The control characters used to identify these parts are,
  • SOH indicates the header follows
  • STX indicates the text follows
  • ETX ubducates the end of the text block
SYN characters are used to establish synchronization between the sender and receiver. The message block follows the SYN characters.

The sender splits a long message up into a number of small message blocks. The trailer for each block consists of a block check character (BCC). As the message block is transmitted, both the sender and receiver each generate their own BCC. At the end of receiving the trailer, the receiver compares its own BCC against that of the senders. If they are the same, this indicates the block has been successfully received without errors, so the receiver will reply using a positive acknowledge (ACK). If the BCC of the receiver does not match that of the sender, the receiver knows an error has occurred during transmission, and will instruct the sender to re-send the block by replying with a negative acknowledge (NACK).

A preset number of repeated attempts to re-transmit a corrupted message block (upon receiving a NACK) will be made before the sender will abort the transmission.

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The type of serial data communications supported by a PC's COM port and usually the type used by PCs when using modems.

Literally, "not synchronous."

When used in low-speed data communications, it means that there is no predefined timing between the characters sent; typically, the characters are sent as they are typed by some human (and you know how unpredictable humans are). The method was designed to handle the expected case that the sender's and receiver's bit rates will never be exactly the same and only one character will be ready to be sent at a time.

The following descriptions, and figure below, are for the polarities used on EIA-232 circuits. While there are no data to send (idle), the data circuit is at a negative voltage.

When a character of data is to be sent, the UART first sends a start bit (a one bit-time duration positive voltage), which is of the opposite polarity of what was happening.

The transition from negative to positive voltage occurs exactly at the boundary between two bit-times, so the receiver now knows where the bit boundaries are (that is, bit synchronization and character synchronization have been achieved).

The receiver senses this transition, waits 1/2-bit-time (the receiver must be reconfigured to nominally the sender's bit rate) to the center of the start bit, and samples (reads) the input again. If it is still a positive voltage, then the receiver can be somewhat sure that the initial edge was not just noise.

The receiver then begins assembling the first character of data (in this case, an ASCII d, by waiting a full bit-time, to the center of the first data bit (data are sent LSB first).

The input is then sampled, and the first data bit (a binary 0 in this case) is received. This is continued for (typically) 8 data bits total (the receiver must be reconfigured to the same number of data

bits per character).

Then the receiver expects a stop bit. It is a one bit at a time duration negative voltage, which is generated by the sender's UART. If one is not received (the line is still positive), then the receiving UART indicates a framing error (which may be interpreted as a break signal).

After the stop bit, either another character (beginning with a start bit) or an idle (a negative voltage of any duration) begins. Figure 1 illustrates this process.

Figure 1: Asynchronous
Since the receiver samples at the center of each bit-time, it can be as much as 1/2 bit-time off (too soon or too late) and still read the bit correctly. Since both the sending and receiving clock may be wrong, each could be up to 1/4 bit-time off (allowing for the worst case, in which one is 1/4 bit-time too fast and the other is 1/4 bit-time too slow). Since the clocks get resynchronized at the start of each character (by the transition to the start bit), the clocks have to be matched only so that they drift by less than 1/4 bit-time in the (approximately) 10 bits per character. This requires an accuracy of 1/4 bit-time in 10 bits, which is (1/4/10 =) 2.5%, which is easily accomplished.

Because of asynchronous data communication's reliance on the addition of a start and stop bit to every character of data, it is usually less efficient than synchronous data communications (of every 10 bits sent, 2 are overhead). That is, 20% of the bandwidth is wasted on start and stop bits, so a 9,600-bits/s line provides only 7,680 bits/s of throughput. Some people call it start/stop data communications in contrast to the synchronous data communications that are commonly used.

Asynchronous data communications equipment needs to be configured for the following:

  • Bit rate (such as 9,600 bits/s)
  • Number of data bits per character (such as 8)
  • Parity type used (such as none)
  • Number of stop bits (usually one, though stop bit durations of 1.5 and 2 bit-times are often settable, but these were needed only for ancient mechanical teletypewriters that needed more than one stop bit-time between characters)
Both ends of a link must have matching settings.


Asynchronous Transmission
Asynchronous systems send data bytes between the sender and receiver by packaging the data in an envelope. This envelope helps transport the character across the transmission link that separates the sender and receiver. The transmitter creates the envelope, and the receiver uses the envelope to extract the data. Each character (data byte) the sender transmits is preceded with a start bit, and suffixed with a stop bit. These extra bits serve to synchronize the receiver with the sender.

In asynchronous serial transmission, each character is packaged in an envelope, and sent across a single wire, bit by bit, to a receiver. Because no signal lines are used to convey clock (timing) information, this method groups data together into a sequence of bits (five - eight), then prefixes them with a start bit and appends the data with a stop bit.

It's important to realize that the receiver and sender are re-synchronized each time a character arrives. What that means is that the motors/cams are restarted each time a start bit arrives at the receiver.

Nowadays, electronic clocks that provide the timing sequences necessary to decode the incoming signal have replaced the electromechanical motors.

This method of transmission is suitable for slow speeds less than about 32000 bits per second. In addition, notice that the signal that is sent does not contain any information that can be used to validate if it was received without modification. This means that this method does not contain error detection information, and is susceptible to errors.

In addition, for every character that is sent, additional two bits is also sent. Consider the sending of a text document, which contains 1000 characters. Each character is eight bits, thus the total number of bits sent are 10000 (8 bits per character plus a start and stop bit for each character). These 10000 bits is actually 1250 characters, meaning that an additional 250 equivalent characters are sent due to the start and stop bits. This represents a large overhead in sending data, clearly making this method an inefficient means of sending large amounts of data.