2017 International Conference on Innovations in Information Embedded and Communication Systems (ICIIECS)
INTERFACING OF MEMS MOTION SENSOR
WITH FPGA USING I2C PROTOCOL
Dr.R.Shantha Selva Kumari
Senior Professor and Head, Dept of ECE
Mepco Schlenk Engineering College
Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, India
rshantha@mepcoeng.ac.in
Abstract - I2C abbreviation is Inter Integrated Circuit. It is a
serial bus protocol found by Philips Semiconductor. I2C bus is
popular because it is simple to use. I2C protocol is used for
communicating low speed devices to processors. It is used to
enable the faster device to communicate with slower devices
without any data loss. I2C bus controller interfaces the master
and slave devices. FPGA acts as a master and MEMS motion
sensor (1TG MPU 6050) acts as a slave. MEMS motion sensor
data is passed to the FPGA using I2C protocol. MEMS motion
sensor has 16-bit ADCs for digitizing the accelerometer outputs.
I2C bus on FPGA gives more simplicity because it requires only
two wires and less number of pin connections. Hence in this
paper we are going to design an I2C bus protocol using Verilog
code which interfaces FPGA board with MEMS motion sensor.
Noisy data from the MEMS motion sensor is denoised by using
haar wavelet coefficients.
Index Terms— FPGA, MEMS, I2C
I.INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, more number of serial data transfer protocols
is used for interfacing high speed and low speed peripherals.
The serial data communication protocols require more number
of pin connections in the IC (Integrated Circuit). In this smart
world, in order to reduce the size of the device , physical size
of IC have to be decreased, so we require less number of pin
connection for serial data transfer. Most of the serial data
transmissions are all just ‘one point to one point’ data transfer
bus systems. They use multiplexing of the data path and
forwarding of messages to service multiple devices, so
connection become more complex. In order to reduce the
more number of pin connections, the I2C protocol was
introduced by Phillips [8]. I2C protocol requires only two lines
for communication with two or more devices and it can control
a network of device chips with just a two general purpose I/O
pins whereas, other bus protocols require more pins to connect
devices. In this proposed system, we are using I2C bus protocol
for interfacing low speed peripheral [10] (MEMS motion
sensor) devices on FPGA. I2C protocol is the best bus for the
control applications, where devices may have to be added or
removed from the system. In the proposed system FPGA acting
as a Master controller and the MEMS muscle motion sensor
(1TG MPU 6050 accelerometer) acting as the slave. Data is
‹,(((
C.Gayathri
PG Student, Dept of ECE
Mepco Schlenk Engineering College
Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, India
csgkgayumay27@gmail.com
passed from the slave to the master. Noisy data from the sensor
is removed by using haar wavelet transform technique.
II.I2C SPECIFICATION
I2C is a serial data transfer bus, it is 8 bit oriented . By using
two signal lines data transmission is done. The two signal lines
are SCL and SDA. SCL is the Serial clock line, it is
unidirectional line and SDA is a Serial data line, it is
bidirectional line , both lines are used to transfer the data
between Master and Slave. There are lots of slave devices are
connected onto the I2C bus, Slave devices are identified by its
unique 7 bit address. After each data transfer there is
acknowledgment bit sent by slave to master or vice versa, to
ensure the data is received.
III.DATA TRANSFER
I2C bus has three conditions namely, idle, start and stop
conditions. Three conditions are indicated by using two lines
namely, SDA and SCL. When I2C bus is an idle mode, both
the lines are high. Master gives the begin condition, which is
SDA line makes a move from high to low while SCL line is
high is appeared in Fig. 1(a). After the start condition I2C bus
is busy. The transmitting device continuously sends the data,
after getting proper acknowledgement from the receiving
device. After sending all the data, master provides the stop
condition which is SDA line makes a transition from low to
high while SCL line is high is shown in Fig. 1(b)
SDA SDA
SCL
SCL
Fig. 1(a) START condition Fig. 1(b) STOP condition
2017 International Conference on Innovations in Information Embedded and Communication Systems (ICIIECS)
IV.PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE
I2C Master SDA MEMS
controller motion
bus in sensor (1TG
FPGA MPU 6050)
(Virtex 5) SCL
Master Slave
Fig. 2 Interfacing of FPGA with MEMS motion sensor
I
Fig. 2 shown consists of FPGA board and MEMS motion
sensor [9]. MEMS sensor sense the vibration [1] and the value
will be read by the master by using I2C protocol, it contains
noise and it is processed [6] to remove the noise. The SCL and
SDA lines are used to provide connection between Master and
Slave. These lines are connected to power supply using pull up
resistor and these resistor values depends on number of slave
devices connected to master, so if the number of slave device
increase the resistor value decreases.
V.I2C MODES OF OPERATION
There are two modes of operation are present in the I2C
protocol, which are master transmitter mode and master
receiver mode. The Master transmitter and receiver mode is
shown in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4. The FPGA controller starts the data
transmission and can drive both SDA and SCL lines, MEMS
motion sensor is addressed by the FPGA. Master and slave
send the data only on the SDA line.
A. Master transmitter mode
Fig. 3 Master transmitter mode
In master transmission mode , the master have to start the
data transmission, so it generate the start sequence to
initiate the data transmission. Master needs to get the data
from the slave so; it sends the slave address to the SDA line
followed by the direction bit (0 or 1). If the slave address
matches, address which is sent by the master, slave gives an
acknowledgement to the master. After getting
acknowledgement from the slave, master send the register
address, it is used to set the register pointer on the slave. Then
the master continuously transmit the data after getting
acknowledgement from the slave for each byte received. In
order to stop the data transmission master generate the stop
condition.
C.Master receiver mode
In master receiver mode, MEMS motion sensor serially
transmits the data on the SDA line, while the serial clock is
input on SCL line. This serial data transfer, beginning and end
are identified by using START and STOP conditions. When
the start condition is generated by the FPGA, address byte is
said to be the first byte received by the MEMS motion sensor.
.
Fig. 4 Master receiver mode
The slave address denoted by 7-bit (1000100), which is
followed by the direction bit (R/ w).The direction bit 0 is for
read operation and 1 is for write operation. After receiving
and decoding the address byte, the MEMS motion sensor
sends the acknowledgement on the SDA line. The MEMS
motion sensor then begins to transmit data to the FPGA
starting with the register address pointed by the register
pointer.
V1.I2C ALGORITHM STEPS
Finite State Machine (FSM) concept is used to implement a
I2C master controller [7] in FPGA using Verilog HDL. The
states of the FSM is given below.
State 1: It is an idle condition, so I2C bus is not performed
any operation. (SCL and SDA remains high).
State 2: I2C Protocol data transmission is started by the
master by providing START condition (SCL is high and
SDA is from high to low).
State 3: Master sends the Slave address (1000100) to the
slave on the SDA line.
State 4: If the address of the master and the slave matches,
slave sends an acknowledgement to the master as a response.
State 5: Master sends the 8 bit Register Address to the slave
on the SDA line. Again acknowledges the master by the
slave by pulling SDA line is low.
State 6: For performing read operation, write operation is
performed first and then read operation is done.
State 7: For performing read operation, Master transmits a
slave address to the slave. Slave address for read is
100010001
State 8: Master receives the data from the slave and
acknowledges the slave.
State 9: Master sends a STOP bit to terminate the connection
(SCL is high and SDA is from Low to high).
2017 International Conference on Innovations in Information Embedded and Communication Systems (ICIIECS)

VII .MEMS MOTION SENSOR (1TG MPU 6050) Digital data from the MEMS motion sensor [4] is given to the
The three axes accelerometer [2] acts as a MEMS motion both low pass and high pass filter. The low pass and high pass
sensor. MEMS motion sensor is shown in Fig. 5 and pin filter architecture is shown in Fig. 7(a) and Fig. 7(b). The low
description in shown in table 1 pass filter and high pass filters produce the approximation
Features coefficients and detailed coefficients respectively.
• Three-axis MEMS accelerometer[3] sensor
with 16-bit ADCs and signal conditioning
• I2C bus LPF 2 X1(n)
• MEMS technology Packaging size :4x4x0.9mm
• Operating current:500ȝA X (n)
• 400kHz Fast ModeI2C
HPF 2
X2(n)

Fig. 6 Wavelet transform

A. Low pass filter Architecture

X (n)
ܼെͳ

X X
b0=0.7071 b1=0.7071 Y (n)
Fig. 5 MEMS motion sensor
TABLE.1 PIN DESCRIPTION OF 1TG MPU +
Fig. 7(a) Low pass filter architecture
PIN DESCRIPTION
B.High pass filter architecture
VCC SupplyVoltage (2.375 v – 3.46v)

X (n) ܼെͳ
GND Ground

SCL Serial Clock Line

X X
SDA Serial Data Line b0= -0.7071 b1=0.7071 Y (n)

XDA Auxiliary Data Line +

Fig. 7(b) High pass filter Architecture
XCL Auxiliary Clock Line

AD0 Selects between I2C address 0x68 and 0x69 C.Thresholding

INT Interrupt Thresholding is applied to the detailed coefficients by

VIII.WAVELET TRANSFORM
Data from the MEMS motion sensor is read out by using I2C
protocol, which contains noise, is denoised by using haar
wavelet transform technique [5]. The architecture for the
wavelet transform is shown in Fig. 6.
using donoho thresholding formula is find in equation(1)
Threshold=variance*¥2log (݊) ----------- (1)
D.Inverse wavelet transform
After thresholding, by applying inverse wavelet
transform noiseless data is obtained. Inverse wavelet
transform architecture is shown in Fig. 8.
2017 International Conference on Innovations in Information Embedded and Communication Systems (ICIIECS)

MEMS motion sensor output contains noise; it is removed

X1(n)
by using haar filter coefficients. Low pass filter output is
2 LPF
shown in Fig. 11
X(n)

+
X2(n)
2 HPF output

Input
Fig. 8 Inverse wavelets transform

IX. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

I2C protocol works with 400 KHZ, in order to synchronize Fig.11 Low pass filter output
MEMS motion sensor with FPGA. I2C Master Controller
clock is generated with 400KHZ. Digitalized data from the
MEMS motion sensor is read out by using I2C protocol. The simulation output for High pass filter (with haar filter
Modelsim simulation result for I2C protocol is shown in Fig. coefficients) is shown in Fig. 12
9.

output

Input

Fig.12 High pass filter output

Fig. 9 I2C protocol output
MEMS motion sensor data is denoised by using haar
MEMS motion sensor provide I2C and SPI type of serial
wavelet coefficients. Denoised data output is shown in Fig.
communication. Due to advantage of I2C protocol , it is used
to read the MEMS motion sensor data. By using I2C 13.
protocol, FPGA read the sensor data which contains noise.
Modelsim simulation result of noisy data of MEMS motion
sensor is shown in Fig. 10.

Fig. 13 Denoised data output

Fig. 10 MEMS motion sensor data with noise
2017 International Conference on Innovations in Information Embedded and Communication Systems (ICIIECS)
A. Device utilization summary of I2C protocol
Inter Integrated circuit protocol (I2C) has been
implemented in FPGA Virtex5. The number of resources
required to implement a Inter Integrated circuit protocol (I2C)
is shown in table.2
TABLE. 2 DEVICE UTILIZATION SUMMARY OF I2C PROTOCOL
B.RTL Schematic of I2C Protocol
RTL Schematic diagram of Inter Integrated Circuit (I2C)
protocol is shown in Fig. 14
Fig. 14 RTL Schematic Diagram
X.CONCLUSION
The FPGA is interfaced with MEMS motion sensor using
I2C communication protocol. I2C specifications are flexible,
can communicate with slow devices and can also use high
speed mode to transfer large amount of data. Because of
many advantages, I2C bus will remain as one of the most
popular serial interfaces to connect integrated circuits on
board. The data read out from the MEMS motion sensor is
very noisy is removed by using haar wavelet transform
technique. In future, the data from the MEMS motion sensor
is consider as a symbol by using Morse code technique and it
is display on the LCD.
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