End-to-End Asynchronous Traffic Scheduling in Converged 5G and Time-Sensitive Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces an asynchronous access mechanism and scheduling model to improve end-to-end delay guarantees in converged 5G and TSN networks, addressing jitter and delay issues for industrial applications.

Contribution

It proposes a novel asynchronous access mechanism (AAM) that isolates jitter in 5G and ensures zero jitter in TSN, along with a scheduling model for resource allocation.

Findings

AAM effectively isolates jitter in 5G networks.

The scheduling model provides end-to-end delay guarantees.

Simulation results show superior performance of the proposed methods.

Abstract

As required by Industry 4.0, companies will move towards flexible and individual manufacturing. To succeed in this transition, convergence of 5G and time-sensitive networks (TSN) is the most promising technology and has thus attracted considerable interest from industry and standardization groups. However, the delay and jitter of end-to-end (e2e) transmission will get exacerbated if the transmission opportunities are missed in TSN due to the 5G transmission jitter and the clock skew between the two network systems. To mitigate this phenomenon, we propose a novel asynchronous access mechanism (AAM) that isolates the jitter only in the 5G system and ensures zero transmission jitter in TSN. We then exploit AAM to develop an e2e asynchronous traffic scheduling model for coordinated allocation of resources for 5G and TSN to provide e2e transmission delay guarantees for time-critical flows. The results of our extensive simulation of AAM on OMNET++ corroborate the superior performance of AAM and the scheduling model.