Scheduling for Time-Critical Applications Utilizing TCP in Software-Based 802.1Qbv Wireless TSN

Time-sensitive networking (TSN) is emerging as a viable means to achieving deterministic quality of service (QoS) communications within mission critical industrial applications such as feedback control systems, robotics, and precision sensing and actuation. Originally developed for Ethernet-based audio-video applications using the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). TSN assume unidirectional flows from source (talked) to destination(listener) and it is most easily implemented using UDP in which packets are transmitted without an acknowledgment from the recipient. However, most existing industrial protocols are implemented using the reliable Transport Control Protocol (TCP) in which each transmission is explicitly acknowledged. In this work, a bandwidth efficient TSN schedule is developed to accommodate the TCP traffic flow between two synchronized robots collaboratively moving an object. We then demonstrate an IEEE 802.1Qbv TSN schedule over an IEEE 802.11 wireless medium that guarantees robot performance requirements are maintained while accommodating concurrent best-effort traffic flows. The process for schedule selection and experimental data collection is discussed, and TSN configuration parameter tuning and experimental results are provided.