Common Embedded Communication Protocols Explained

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UART, SPI, I2C and other serial communications are very common methods in embedded development. The underlying communication principles are not difficult, but many beginners struggle to learn them.

Today, I will share some common underlying data transmission principles of these communications.

1UART Serial Port

UART: Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter.

The UART serial port is the most common type of serial communication. Below is an animation of the serial port connection to a host computer, as well as the application of RS232.

2SPI Serial Communication

SPI: Serial Peripheral Interface.

SPI is a commonly used serial synchronous communication protocol with very wide applications.

Below is the timing diagram for SPI data transmission:

3I²C Communication

I²C: Inter-Integrated Circuit, literally meaning between integrated circuits, is commonly referred to as I²C Bus.

I²C mainly distinguishes and identifies slave devices via addresses, and its communication principle is relatively simple.

4Infrared Remote Control

Infrared remote control is quite common in our daily lives; most household remote controls are infrared.

Infrared remote control communicates by controlling pulse width (the duration of high and low levels), and it establishes a communication link via infrared wireless signals (it won’t work if blocked, but can reflect).

5Serial-to-Parallel Conversion Circuit

Serial-to-parallel conversion refers to converting serial data into parallel data, controlled by a clock signal to transmit one bit of serial data at a time, which forms a parallel data set (8 bits).

There are many off-the-shelf chips for this converter, and the principle is quite simple.

6Others

Here are some other principles of serial transmission (waveforms):

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