Assessment of Industrial Networking Technologies for Support of Time-Critical Communication

Abstract

Industry 4.0 is the current and future of the automation industry, and real-time systems play a vital role in its success. The automotive and automation industry has benefitted from the efficiency and productivity of embedded systems in both past and present and with more demanding schedules and time-critical applications taking their place in the modern world the importance of real-time systems cannot be overstated. For time-critical communication on an industrial level, there have been major improvements. The newest player is Time Sensitive Networks. It is packed with standards targeting time-critical transmissions. There is not much work done on the practical implementation of Time Sensitive Networks. A handful of research was available on Time Sensitive Networks, with most of them being software and simulation-based. The main focus of this study was data link layer comparisons of Ethernet and Time Sensitive Networks. The comparison-based analysis was done on Ethernet IEEE 802.3 ab and Time Sensitive Networks IEEE 802.1. The two main standards that will be used are IEEE 802.1 Qbu frame pre-emption and IEEE 802.1 Qbv enhancement for scheduled traffic. A series of tests were performed on Ethernet and Time Sensitive Networks to find the best possible configurations. The last step was to apply all the information gathered from the testing phase. This was achieved by preparing a real life scenario based network, and then running the Ethernet and Time Sensitive Networks settings on the same setup. The last test drew comparisons on parallel execution. The final verdict was on jitter and latency performances