SDN-based Self-Configuration for Time-Sensitive IoT Networks

Abstract

The convergence of Information Technology (IT) and Industrial Operations Technology (OT) results in efficient network management solutions for automotive and industrial automation environments. However, configuring real-time Ethernet networks while maintaining the desired QoS is challenging due to the dynamic nature of OT networks and the high number of configuration parameters. This paper introduces a Software-Defined Network (SDN)-based self-configuration framework for the time-sensitive networks (TSNs). Unlike standard TSN, we remove end-host-related dependencies and put streams initially on default paths to extract traffic characteristics by monitoring network traffic at edge switches. Communicated to a central SDN controller, these characteristics allow moving streams to optimal paths while maintaining hard real-time guarantees, for which we also formulate an optimization problem. According to the results, although the proposed approach increases the average delay of critical frames by less than 1%, a certain level of real-time guarantee can be provided without prior knowledge of the streams.