Method and apparatus for serial communication system capable of identifying slave apparatus using half-duplex channel communication method
AssigneeRicoh Company, Ltd.
InventorYukio Kadowaki
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A serial communication system is provided which performs serial communication between host and slave apparatus using half-duplex channel communication with a serial data signal generated by superimposing a data signal on a clock signal. The host apparatus transmits through a transmission path an identification signal generated by superimposing on the clock signal identification data for specifying a slave apparatus to be requested, after transmitting through the transmission path a preamble signal generated by superimposing successively repeated data on the clock signal.
Claims12
A serial communications system which performs half-duplex channel serial communications, the serial communications system comprising:
- a host apparatus configured to send first data;
- a plurality of slave apparatuses each configured to return second data in response to the first data sent from the host apparatus;
- a master circuit connected to the host apparatus and configured to perform a first master operation using the first data from the host apparatus and a second master operation to transmit to the host apparatus the second data sent from an arbitrary one of the plurality of slave apparatuses;
- a plurality of slave circuits connected to the plurality of slave apparatuses on a one-to-one basis and each slave circuit being configured to perform a first slave operation to send the first data to plurality of the slave apparatuses including a designated slave apparatus in response to the first master transmission operation and a second slave operation to cause the master circuit to perform the second master operation;
- and
- a transmission path configured to connect the master circuit to the slave circuit.
A method for performing serial communication using half-duplex channel communication, the method comprising steps of:
- transmitting a preamble signal generated by superimposing successively repeated data on a clock signal to a transmission path;
- transmitting a serial identification signal generated by superimposing on the clock signal identification data sent from a host apparatus, after transmitting the preamble signal;
- extracting the identification data from the serial identification signal received through the transmission path;
- outputting the extracted identification data to a slave apparatus;
- transmitting through the transmission path a second serial data signal generated by superimposing on the serial identification signal second data sent from a designated slave apparatus;
- extracting the second data from the second serial data signal received through the transmission path;
- and
- outputting the extracted second data to the host apparatus.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.