24.3.2.4 Data Reception

The USART receiver samples the reception line to detect and interpret the received data. The direction of the pin must, therefore, be configured as an input by writing a ‘0’ to the corresponding bit in the Direction register (PORTx.DIRn).

The receiver accepts data when a valid Start bit is detected. Each bit that follows the Start bit will be sampled at the baud rate or XCK clock and shifted into the Receive Shift register until the first Stop bit of a frame is received. A second Stop bit will be ignored by the receiver. When the first Stop bit is received, and a complete serial frame is present in the Receive Shift register, the contents of the Shift register will be moved into the receive buffer. The Receive Complete Interrupt Flag (the RXCIF bit in the USARTn.STATUS register) is set, and the interrupt is generated if enabled.

The RXDATA register is the part of the RX buffer that can be read by the application software when RXCIF is set. When using frames with fewer than eight bits, the unused Most Significant bits (MSb) are read as zero. If 9-bit characters are used, the DATA[8] bit in the USARTn.RXDATAH register must be read before the DATA[7:0] bits in the USARTn.RXDATAL register.