Leveraging Flexibility of Time-Sensitive Networks for Dynamic Reconfigurability
Key: GRK+21-1
Author: Christoph Gärtner, Amr Rizk, Boris Koldehofe, Rhaban Hark, René Guillaume, Ralf Steinmetz
Date: June 2021
Kind: In proceedings
Book title: Proceedings of the 20th IFIP Networking Conference
Keywords: TSN, IEEE802.1Qbv, scheduling, flexibility
Abstract: In Time-Sensitive Networks (TSN) applications with the highest real-time flow requirements are deployed using the Time-Aware Shaper which requires careful planning and scheduling of flows before deployment. Such deployments lack support for dynamic industrial scenarios such as modular machine assembly and reconfiguration, which require a flexible transition between real-time tasks. In contrast, state-of-the-art techniques rely on flow rescheduling and deployment in conjunction with undesired network downtime. Existing works on adapting schedules to traffic admissions are limited in their ability to choose suitable flows to account for future tasks. In this paper, we aim to leverage the flexibility of scheduler configurations to enable TSN dynamic reconfigurability at runtime. We propose a notion of flexibility for TSN Time-Aware Shaper schedules which we utilize to decide the admissibility of consecutive real-time tasks.

The documents distributed by this server have been provided by the contributing authors as a means to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work on a non-commercial basis. Copyright and all rights therein are maintained by the authors or by other copyright holders, not withstanding that they have offered their works here electronically. It is understood that all persons copying this information will adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.