Assessing the traffic scheduling method for time-sensitive networking (TSN) by practical implementation

Time-sensitive networking (TSN), as standardized and maintained by the IEEE 802.1 Task Group, enhances the real-time and deterministic capabilities of the Ethernet. However, traffic scheduling is not standardized, and is being extensively researched. Most studies are theoretical in nature; practical validation studies are rare. To fill this gap, we first constructed a real-world TSN-based process automation system and presented finegrained guidelines regarding how a traffic scheduling method (TSM) can be deployed in industrial facilities. We experimentally investigated the feasibility of our method, and compared its performance to that of a commercial TSN scheduler. The results show that our method precisely schedules traffic to satisfy firm realtime requirements and achieves ultra-low latency by eliminating the queuing delays. The scheduling calculation times for 500 random cases show that our TSM can appropriately schedule flows in milliseconds, more than 571-fold faster than the commercial scheduler.