Serial port

A serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time.^[1] This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. Throughout most of the history of personal computers, data has been transferred through serial ports to devices such as modems, terminals, various peripherals, and directly between computers.

While interfaces such as

Modern consumer personal computers (PCs) have largely replaced serial ports with higher-speed standards, primarily USB. However, serial ports are still frequently used in applications demanding simple, low-speed interfaces, such as industrial automation systems, scientific instruments, point of sale systems and some industrial and consumer products.

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Modern devices use an

Very low-cost systems, such as some early

The individual signals on a serial port are unidirectional and when connecting two devices, the outputs of one device must be connected to the inputs of the other. Devices are divided into two categories: data terminal equipment (DTE) and data circuit-terminating equipment (DCE). A line that is an output on a DTE device is an input on a DCE device and vice versa, so a DCE device can be connected to a DTE device with a straight wired cable, in which each pin on one end goes to the same numbered pin on the other end.

Conventionally, computers and terminals are DTE, while peripherals such as modems are DCE. If it is necessary to connect two DTE (or DCE) devices together, a cable with reversed TX and RX lines, known as a cross-over, roll-over or null modem cable must be used.

Generally, serial port connectors are gendered, only allowing connectors to mate with a connector of the opposite gender. With D-subminiature connectors, the male connectors have protruding pins and female connectors have corresponding round sockets.^[2] Either type of connector can be mounted on equipment or a panel; or terminate a cable.

Connectors mounted on DTE are likely to be male, and those mounted on DCE are likely to be female (with the cable connectors being the opposite). However, this is far from universal; for instance, most serial printers have a female DB25 connector, but they are DTEs.^[3] In this circumstance, the appropriately gendered connectors on the cable or a gender changer can be used to correct the mismatch.

The only connector specified in the original RS-232 standard was the 25-pin D-subminiature, however, many other connectors have been used to save money or save on physical space, among other reasons. In particular, since many devices do not use all of the 20 signals that are defined by the standard, connectors with fewer pins are often used. While specific examples follow, countless other connectors have been used for RS-232 connections.

The 9-pin

Some miniaturized electronics, particularly graphing calculators^[5] and hand-held amateur and two-way radio equipment,^[6] have serial ports using a phone connector, usually the smaller 2.5 or 3.5 mm connectors and the most basic 3-wire interface—transmit, receive and ground.

Another common connector is a 10 × 2 pin header common on motherboards and add-in cards which is usually converted via a ribbon cable to the more standard 9-pin DE-9 connector (and frequently mounted on a free slot plate or other part of the housing).^[10]

The following table lists commonly used RS-232 signals and pin assignments:^[11]

Signal Ground is a common return for the other connections; it appears on two pins in the Yost standard but is the same signal. The DB-25 connector includes a second Protective Ground on pin 1, which is intended to be connected by each device to its own frame ground or similar. Connecting Protective Ground to Signal Ground is a common practice but not recommended.

Note that EIA/TIA 561 combines DSR and RI,^[13][14] and the Yost standard combines DSR and DCD.

Operating systems usually create symbolic names for the serial ports of a computer, rather than requiring programs to refer to them by hardware address.

This list includes some of the more common devices that are connected to the serial port on a PC. Some of these such as modems and serial mice are falling into disuse while others are readily available. Serial ports are very common on most types of microcontroller, where they can be used to communicate with a PC or other serial devices.

Since the control signals for a serial port can be driven by any digital signal, some applications used the control lines of a serial port to monitor external devices, without exchanging serial data. A common commercial application of this principle was for some models of uninterruptible power supply which used the control lines to signal loss of power, low battery, and other status information. At least some Morse code training software used a code key connected to the serial port to simulate actual code use; the status bits of the serial port could be sampled very rapidly and at predictable times, making it possible for the software to decipher Morse code.

Serial computer mice may draw their operating power from the received data or control signals.^[16][17]

Serial standards provide for many different operating speeds as well as adjustments to the protocol to account for different operating conditions. The most well-known options are speed, number of data bits per character, parity, and number of stop bits per character.

In modern serial ports using a UART integrated circuit, all these settings can be software-controlled. Hardware from the 1980s and earlier may require setting switches or jumpers on a circuit board.

The configuration for serial ports designed to be connected to a PC has become a de facto standard, usually stated as 9600/8-N-1.

Serial ports use two-level (binary) signaling, so the data rate in bits per second is equal to the symbol rate in baud. The total speed includes bits for framing (stop bits, parity, etc.) and so the effective data rate is lower than the bit transmission rate. For example, with 8-N-1 character framing, only 80% of the bits are available for data; for every eight bits of data, two more framing bits are sent.

A standard series of rates is based on multiples of the rates for electromechanical teleprinters; some serial ports allow many arbitrary rates to be selected, but the speeds on both sides of the connection must match for data to be received correctly. Bit rates commonly supported include 75, 110, 300, 1200, 2400, 4800, 9600, 19200, 38400, 57600 and 115200 bit/s.^[19] Many of these standard modem bit rates are multiples of either 1.2 kbit/s (e.g., 19200, 38400, 76800) or 0.9 kbit/s (e.g., 57600, 115200).^[22] Crystal oscillators with a frequency of 1.843200 MHz are sold specifically for this purpose. This is 16 times the fastest bit rate, and the serial port circuit can easily divide this down to lower frequencies as required.

The capability to set a bit rate does not imply that a working connection will result. Not all bit rates are possible with all serial ports. Some special-purpose protocols such as MIDI for musical instrument control, use serial data rates other than the teleprinter standards. Some serial port implementations can automatically choose a bit rate by observing what a connected device is sending and synchronizing to it.

The number of data bits in each character can be 5 (for Baudot code), 6 (rarely used), 7 (for true ASCII), 8 (for most kinds of data, as this size matches the size of a byte), or 9 (rarely used). 8 data bits are almost universally used in newer applications. 5 or 7 bits generally only make sense with older equipment such as teleprinters.

Most serial communications designs send the data bits within each byte

Parity is a method of detecting errors in transmission. When parity is used with a serial port, an extra data bit is sent with each data character, arranged so that the number of 1 bits in each character, including the parity bit, is always odd or always even. If a byte is received with the wrong number of 1s, then it must have been corrupted. Correct parity does not necessarily indicate absence of corruption as a corrupted transmission with an even number of errors will pass the parity check. A single parity bit does not allow implementation of

Stop bits sent at the end of every character allow the receiving signal hardware to detect the end of a character and to resynchronize with the character stream. Electronic devices usually use one stop bit. If slow electromechanical teleprinters are used, one-and-one-half or two stop bits may be required.

The data/parity/stop (D/P/S) conventional notation specifies the framing of a serial connection. The most common configuration for the personal computing devices is 8-N-1 (also spelled as 8N1, 8-None-1^[23]), in which there is one start bit, eight ("8") data bits, no ("N") parity bit, and one ("1") stop bit.^[24] In this notation, the parity bit is not included into the count of the data bits. For example, 7/E/1 (7E1) means that an even parity bit is added to the 7 data bits for a total of 8 bits between the start and stop bits.

The abbreviation is usually given together with the line speed in

Flow control is used in circumstances where a transmitter might be able to send data faster than the receiver is able to process it. To cope with this, serial lines often incorporate a handshaking method. There are hardware and software handshaking methods.

Hardware handshaking is done with extra signals, often the RS-232 RTS/CTS or DTR/DSR signal circuits. RTS and CTS are used to control data flow, signaling, for instance, when a buffer is almost full. Per the RS-232 standard and its successors, DTR and DSR are used to signal that equipment is present and powered up so are usually asserted at all times. However, non-standard implementations exist, for example, printers that use DTR as flow control.

Software handshaking is done for example with

The advantage of hardware handshaking is that it can be extremely fast, it works independently of imposed meaning such as ASCII on the transferred data and it is stateless. Its disadvantage is that it requires more hardware and cabling, and both ends of the connection must support the hardware handshaking protocol used.

The advantage of software handshaking is that it can be done with absent or incompatible hardware handshaking circuits and cabling. The disadvantage, common to all in-band control signaling, is that it introduces complexities in ensuring that control messages get through even when data messages are blocked, and data can never be mistaken for control signals. The former is normally dealt with by the operating system or device driver; the latter normally by ensuring that control codes are

If no handshaking is employed, an overrun receiver might simply fail to receive data from the transmitter. Approaches for preventing this include reducing the speed of the connection so that the receiver can always keep up, increasing the size of buffers so it can keep up averaged over a longer time, using delays after time-consuming operations (e.g. in termcap) or employing a mechanism to resend data which has not been received correctly (e.g. TCP).

• List of Bluetooth profiles § Serial Port Profile (SPP)
• Serial over LAN – A mechanism that allows the serial port of a managed system to be redirected over IP
• Teleprinter – Device that motivated serial port development
• Virtual COM port – A software representation of a serial port

• Serial Port Complete: COM Ports, USB Virtual COM Ports, and Ports for Embedded Systems; 2nd Edition; Jan Axelson; Lakeview Research; 380 pages; 2007;
  ISBN 978-1-931-44806-2
  .

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Programming:Serial Data Communications

• Media related to Serial port at Wikimedia Commons
• RS-232 and other serial port pinouts list