Coordinated Data Transmission in Time-Sensitive Networking for Mixed Time-Sensitive Applications

As an emerging communication tool, Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is proposed by the IEEE 802.1 TSN Task Group to achieve deterministic data transmission. TSN defines protocols to ensure the determinism of traditional Ethernet by configuring gate control list (GCL). However, calculating schedules of GCL according to different time-sensitive applications, is not well-defined in the standard. In this paper, we focus on the problem of mixed time-sensitive data transmission. To this end, we first model the data into three categories: high time-sensitive (HTS) flows, low time-sensitive (LTS) flows, and best-effort flows. Then based on the models, we propose a coordinated transmission framework to transmit mixed time-sensitive data. Under this framework, we develop a parameter selection approach for choosing the proper cycle time and the scheduling unit. To reduce the impact of HTS data on LTS data flows, we formulate a fine-grained scheduling problem. Then, we design an injection time grouping (ITG) algorithm by grouping the flows with the same period to reduce the computation complexity. Simulation results corroborate the effectiveness of the parameter selection approach and ITG algorithm.