On Multi-Level Preemption in Ethernet

Ethernet is increasingly being considered as the solution to high bandwidth requirements in the next generation of timing critical applications that make their way in cars, planes or smart factories to mention a few examples. Until recently, ethernet frames used to be transmitted exclusively in a nonpreemptive manner. That is, once a frame starts transmitting on a switch output port, its transmission cannot be interrupted by any other frame until completion. This constraint may cause time critical frames to be blocked for long periods of time because of the transmission of non-critical frames. The IEEE 802.3br standard addressed this issue by introducing a one-level ethernet frame preemption paradigm. In this approach, frames transmitted through a switch output port are classified as express frames or preemptable frames, depending on their priority levels. Express frames can preempt preemptable frames and two frames belonging to the same class cannot preempt each other. While this partially solves the problem for express frames, all preemptable frames can still suffer blocking irrespective of their priority level. In this work, we investigate the feasibility and advantages of multi-level preemptions in time-sensitive ethernet networks.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

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To reduce the latency of time-sensitive flows in Ethernet networks, the IEEE TSN Task Group introduced the IEEE 802.1Qbu Standard, which specifies a 1-level preemption scheme for IEEE 802.1 networks. Recently, serious limitations of this scheme w.r.t. flows responsiveness were exposed and the so-called multi-level preemption approach was proposed to address these drawbacks. As is the case with most, if not all, real-time and/or time-sensitive preemptive systems, an appropriate priority-to-flow assignment policy plays a central role in the resulting performance of both 1-level and multi-level preemption schemes to avoid the over-provisioning and/or the sub-optimal use of hardware resources. Yet on another front, the multi-level preemption scheme raises new configuration challenges. Specifically, the right number of preemption level(s) to enable for swift transmission of flows; and the flow-to-preemption-class assignment synthesis remain open problems. To the best of our knowledge, there is no prior work in the literature addressing these important challenges. In this work, we address these three challenges. We demonstrate the applicability of our proposed solution by using both synthetic and real-life use-cases. Our experimental results show that multi-level preemption schemes improve the schedulability of flows by over 12% as compared to a 1-level preemption scheme, and at a higher abstraction level, the proposed configuration framework improves the schedulability of flows by up to 6% as compared to the dominant Deadline Monotonic Priority Ordering.This work was partially supported by National Funds through FCT/MCTES (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology), within the CISTER Research Unit (UIDP/UIDB/04234/2020); also by FCT through the European Social Fund (ESF) and the Regional Operational Programme (ROP) Norte 2020, under grant 2020.09636.BD.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Latency Analysis of Multiple Classes of AVB Traffic in TSN with Standard Credit Behavior using Network Calculus

Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is a set of amendments that extend Ethernet to support distributed safety-critical and real-time applications in the industrial automation, aerospace and automotive areas. TSN integrates multiple traffic types and supports interactions in several combinations. In this paper we consider the configuration supporting Scheduled Traffic (ST) traffic scheduled based on Gate-Control-Lists (GCLs), Audio-Video-Bridging (AVB) traffic according to IEEE 802.1BA that has bounded latencies, and Best-Effort (BE) traffic, for which no guarantees are provided. The paper extends the timing analysis method to multiple AVB classes and proofs the credit bounds for multiple classes of AVB traffic, respectively under frozen and non-frozen behaviors of credit during guard band (GB). They are prerequisites for non-overflow credits of Credit-Based Shaper (CBS) and preventing starvation of AVB traffic. Moreover, this paper proposes an improved timing analysis method reducing the pessimism for the worst-case end-to-end delays of AVB traffic by considering the limitations from the physical link rate and the output of CBS. Finally, we evaluate the improved analysis method on both synthetic and real-world test cases, showing the significant reduction of pessimism on latency bounds compared to related work, and presenting the correctness validation compared with simulation results. We also compare the AVB latency bounds in the case of frozen and non-frozen credit during GB. Additionally, we evaluate the scalability of our method with variation of the load of ST flows and of the bandwidth reservation for AVB traffic

Time-Sensitive Networking for Industrial Automation: Challenges, Opportunities, and Directions

With the introduction of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT) into industrial applications, industrial automation is undergoing tremendous change, especially with regard to improving efficiency and reducing the cost of products. Industrial automation applications are often required to transmit time- and safety-critical data to monitor and control industrial processes, especially for critical control systems. There are a number of solutions to meet these requirements (e.g., priority-based real-time schedules and closed-loop feedback control systems). However, due to their different processing capabilities (e.g., in the end devices and network switches), different vendors may come out with distinct solutions, and this makes the large-scale integration of devices from different vendors difficult or impossible. IEEE 802.1 Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is a standardization group formed to enhance and optimize the IEEE 802.1 network standards, especially for Ethernet-based networks. These solutions can be evolved and adapted into a cross-industry scenario, such as a large-scale distributed industrial plant, which requires multiple industrial entities working collaboratively. This paper provides a comprehensive review on the current advances in TSN standards for industrial automation. We present the state-of-the-art IEEE TSN standards and discuss the opportunities and challenges when integrating each protocol into the industry domains. Finally, we discuss some promising research about applying the TSN technology to industrial automation applications

Impact of AS6802 Synchronization Protocol on Time-Triggered and Rate-Constrained Traffic

TTEthernet is an Ethernet-based synchronized network technology compliant with the AFDX standard. It supports safety-critical applications by defining different traffic classes: Time-Triggered (TT), Rate-Constrained (RC), and Best-Effort traffic. The synchronization is managed through the AS6802 protocol, which defines so-called Protocol Control Frames (PCFs) to synchronize the local clock of each device. In this paper, we analyze the synchronization protocol to assess the impact of the PCFs on TT and RC traffic. We propose a method to decrease the impact of PCFs on TT and a new Network Calculus model to compute RC delay bounds with the influence of both PCF and TT traffic. We finish with a performance evaluation to i) assess the impact of PCFs, ii) show the benefits of our method in terms of reducing the impact of PCFs on TT traffic and iii) prove the necessity of taking the PCF traffic into account to compute correct RC worst-case delays and provide a safe system