Unleashing 5G Seamless Integration with TSN for Industry 5.0: Frame Forwarding and QoS Treatment

TL;DR

This paper presents a VxLAN-based solution to integrate TSN and 5G for industrial applications, enabling low-latency, prioritized traffic handling with minimal delay, validated through a 5G testbed.

Contribution

It introduces a novel VxLAN-based framework for harmonizing frame forwarding and QoS between TSN and 5G, supporting multiple VLANs and traffic mapping.

Findings

Average delay of ~100 μs with the proposed mechanisms

Preserves QoS priorities between 5G and TSN

Significantly reduces transmission delay compared to typical 5G delays

Abstract

Integrating Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) and 5th Generation (5G) systems is key for providing wireless low-latency services in industry. Despite research efforts, challenges remain. Due to the lack of commercial 5G modems supporting Ethernet-based sessions, tunneling mechanisms must be used to enable Layer 2 connectivity between TSN islands via IP-based 5G modems. Furthermore, harmonizing traffic classification and prioritization between TSN and 5G technologies is crucial for meeting industrial service requirements. In this work, we propose a Virtual Extensible LAN (VxLAN)-based solution to harmonize frame forwarding and Quality of Service (QoS) treatment among 5G and TSN. Our solution supports multiple Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) across several production lines. Furthermore, it supports TSN traffic mapping into 5G QoS flows. We use a 5G testbed to validate the effectiveness of the adopted solution. Our results show the average delay introduced by the proposed mechanisms is approximately 100 {\mu}s, which is significantly lower than the typical 5G packet transmission delay. Moreover, our findings demonstrate our solution preserves QoS treatment between the 5G system and TSN, ensuring that the priority of 5G QoS flows aligns with the priorities of industrial traffic flows.