Design and Analysis of Multi-Protocol Conversion Unit for SPI, I2C and UART

In this research paper, The Multi-Protocol Conversion Unit (MPCU) is designed and simulated using Hardware Descriptive Language (HDL). This unit acts like a bridge and can perform data communication between three different protocol sets which are among the most prevalent methods used for serial communication of data. The following protocols are Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), Inter Integrated Circuit (I2C), and Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter (UART). The designed conversion module will take input from any of the three different protocols along with a value of Conversion Select (COSE) input. In accordance with the input value of COSE, the data will be transferred from the data bus that is within the MPCU module to any one of the three protocols slave. Which will in turn convert the received data and produce the 8-bit output data at the end. Thus, in terms of prototyping devices if there is a need for receiving data from any of the protocols and to send that data onto a slave based on different protocols there is no need for the data to be processed by the microprocessor or microcontroller. It is possible when data is received by the MPCU module and sent to the receiving slave just by changing the value of COSE. The simulation of this MPCU shows that conversion is feasible between masters of the three protocols and their slaves, and it has a wide range of applications in research and development as well as device prototyping devices. Moreover, it helps the Microcontroller to do other tasks without making it process data for the conversions. This unit could be modified further to convert data received by slaves so that it can be sent to the other slaves based on different protocols connected to the MPCU.