10 research outputs found
Improved Delay Bound for a Service Curve Element with Known Transmission Rate
Network calculus is often used to prove delay bounds in deterministic
networks, using arrival and service curves. We consider a FIFO system that
offers a rate-latency service curve and where packet transmission occurs at
line rate without pre-emption. The existing network calculus delay bounds take
advantage of the service curve guarantee but not of the fact that transmission
occurs at full line rate. In this letter, we provide a novel, improved delay
bound which takes advantage of these two features. Contrary to existing bounds,
ours is per-packet and depends on the packet length. We prove that it is tight.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
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
On Time Synchronization Issues in Time-Sensitive Networks with Regulators and Nonideal Clocks
Flow reshaping is used in time-sensitive networks (as in the context of IEEE
TSN and IETF Detnet) in order to reduce burstiness inside the network and to
support the computation of guaranteed latency bounds. This is performed using
per-flow regulators (such as the Token Bucket Filter) or interleaved regulators
(as with IEEE TSN Asynchronous Traffic Shaping). Both types of regulators are
beneficial as they cancel the increase of burstiness due to multiplexing inside
the network. It was demonstrated, by using network calculus, that they do not
increase the worst-case latency. However, the properties of regulators were
established assuming that time is perfect in all network nodes. In reality,
nodes use local, imperfect clocks. Time-sensitive networks exist in two
flavours: (1) in non-synchronized networks, local clocks run independently at
every node and their deviations are not controlled and (2) in synchronized
networks, the deviations of local clocks are kept within very small bounds
using for example a synchronization protocol (such as PTP) or a satellite based
geo-positioning system (such as GPS). We revisit the properties of regulators
in both cases. In non-synchronized networks, we show that ignoring the timing
inaccuracies can lead to network instability due to unbounded delay in per-flow
or interleaved regulators. We propose and analyze two methods (rate and burst
cascade, and asynchronous dual arrival-curve method) for avoiding this problem.
In synchronized networks, we show that there is no instability with per-flow
regulators but, surprisingly, interleaved regulators can lead to instability.
To establish these results, we develop a new framework that captures industrial
requirements on clocks in both non-synchronized and synchronized networks, and
we develop a toolbox that extends network calculus to account for clock
imperfections.Comment: ACM SIGMETRICS 2020 Boston, Massachusetts, USA June 8-12, 202
Reliability Mechanisms for Controllers in Real-Time Cyber-Physical Systems
Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are real-world processes that are controlled by computer algorithms. We consider CPSs where a centralized, software-based controller maintains the process in a desired state by exchanging measurements and setpoints with process agents (PAs). As CPSs control processes with low-inertia, e.g., electric grids and autonomous cars, the controller needs to satisfy stringent real-time constraints.
However, the controllers are susceptible to delay and crash faults, and the communication network might drop, delay or reorder messages. This degrades the quality of control of the physical process, failure of which can result in damage to life or property. Existing reliability solutions are either not well-suited for real-time CPSs or impose serious restrictions on the controllers. In this thesis, we design, implement and evaluate reliability mechanisms for real-time CPS controllers that require minimal modifications to the controller itself.
We begin by abstracting the execution of a CPS using events in the CPS, and the two inherent relations among those events, namely network and computation relations. We use these relations to introduce the intentionality relation that uses these events to capture the state of the physical process. Based on the intentionality relation, we define three correctness properties namely, state safety, optimal selection and consistency, that together provide linearizability (one-copy equivalence) for CPS controllers.
We propose intentionality clocks and Quarts, and prove that they provide linearizability. To provide consistency, Quarts ensures agreement among controller replicas, which is typically achieved using consensus. Consensus can add an unbounded-latency overhead. Quarts leverages the properties specific to CPSs to perform agreement using pre-computed priorities among sets of received measurements, resulting in a bounded-latency overhead with high availability. Using simulation, we show that availability of Quarts, with two replicas, is more than an order of magnitude higher than consensus.
We also propose Axo, a fault-tolerance protocol that uses active replication to detect and recover faulty replicas, and provide timeliness that requires delayed setpoints be masked from the PAs. We study the effect of delay faults and the impact of fault-tolerance with Axo, by deploying Axo in two real-world CPSs.
Then, we realize that the proposed reliability mechanisms also apply to unconventional CPSs such as software defined networking (SDN), where the controlled process is the routing fabric of the network. We show that, in SDN, violating consistency can cause implementation of incorrect routing policies. Thus, we use Quarts and intentionality clocks, to design and implement QCL, a coordination layer for SDN controllers that guarantees control-plane consistency. QCL also drastically reduces the response time of SDN controllers when compared to consensus-based techniques.
In the last part of the thesis, we address the problem of reliable communication between the software agents, in a wide-area network that can drop, delay or reorder messages. For this, we propose iPRP, an IP-friendly parallel redundancy protocol for 0 ms repair of packet losses. iPRP requires fail-independent paths for high-reliability. So, we study the fail-independence of Wi-Fi links using real-life measurements, as a first step towards using Wi-Fi for real-time communication in CPSs