Analysis of Deterministic Ethernet scheduling for the Industrial Internet of Things

Abstract

Scheduling and guaranteeing strict timeliness for real-time communication across large networks, like those envisioned in the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT), in coexistence with non-critical traffic, opens up a remarkable opportunity of application for Deterministic Ethernet. However, the inherently dynamic behavior and flexibility required in IoT systems contrast with the typically static design of scheduled time-triggered networks. This paper explores the feasibility of online incremental synthesis of network schedules that adapt to such dynamic behavior without losing the strict timeliness guarantees. We investigate the computational complexity of the incremental scheduling problem and profile performance metrics enabling the evaluation of potential trade-offs setting the boundaries of online-close to real-time- time-triggered scheduling for the Industrial Internet of Things.