30.6.2.6 Data Reception

Disabling the Receiver

Writing '0' to the Receiver Enable bit in the CTRLB register (CTRLB.RXEN) will disable the receiver, flush the two-level receive buffer, and data from ongoing receptions will be lost.

Error Bits

The USART receiver has three error bits in the Status (STATUS) register: Frame Error (FERR), Buffer Overflow (BUFOVF), and Parity Error (PERR). Once an error happens, the corresponding error bit will be set until it is cleared by writing ‘1’ to it. These bits are also cleared automatically when the receiver is disabled.

There are two methods for buffer overflow notification, selected by the Immediate Buffer Overflow Notification bit in the Control A register (CTRLA.IBON):

When CTRLA.IBON=1, STATUS.BUFOVF is raised immediately upon buffer overflow. Software can then empty the receive FIFO by reading RxDATA, until the receiver complete interrupt flag (INTFLAG.RXC) is cleared.

When CTRLA.IBON=0, the buffer overflow condition is attending data through the receive FIFO. After the received data is read, STATUS.BUFOVF will be set along with INTFLAG.RXC.

Asynchronous Data Reception

The USART includes a clock recovery and data recovery unit for handling asynchronous data reception.

The clock recovery logic can synchronize the incoming asynchronous serial frames at the RxD pin to the internally generated baud-rate clock.

The data recovery logic samples and applies a low-pass filter to each incoming bit, thereby improving the noise immunity of the receiver.

Asynchronous Operational Range

The operational range of the asynchronous reception depends on the accuracy of the internal baud-rate clock, the rate of the incoming frames, and the frame size (in number of bits). In addition, the operational range of the receiver is depending on the difference between the received bit rate and the internally generated baud rate. If the baud rate of an external transmitter is too high or too low compared to the internally generated baud rate, the receiver will not be able to synchronize the frames to the start bit.

There are two possible sources for a mismatch in baud rate: First, the reference clock will always have some minor instability. Second, the baud-rate generator cannot always do an exact division of the reference clock frequency to get the baud rate desired. In this case, the BAUD register value must be set to give the lowest possible error, see Clock Generation – Baud-Rate Generator from Related Links.

Recommended maximum receiver baud-rate errors for various character sizes are shown in the table below.

The following equations calculate the ratio of the incoming data rate and internal receiver baud rate:

• R_SLOW is the ratio of the slowest incoming data rate that can be accepted in relation to the receiver baud rate
• R_FAST is the ratio of the fastest incoming data rate that can be accepted in relation to the receiver baud rate
• D is the sum of character size and parity size (D = 5 to 10 bits)

The recommended maximum Rx Error assumes that the receiver and transmitter equally divide the maximum total error. Its connection to the SERCOM Receiver error acceptance is depicted in this figure:

The recommendation values in the table above accommodate errors of the clock source and the baud generator. The following figure gives an example for a baud rate of 3Mbps: