Multiple Cascaded Preconfigured Cycles for the FRER Mechanism in Time-Sensitive Networking

Abstract

TSN (Time-Sensitive Networking) defines a set of standards that add deterministic low-latency services to Ethernet. High reliability is also one essential feature of TSN. IEEE 802.1CB introduces the FRER (Frame Replication and Elimination for Reliability) mechanism for TSN. It transmits duplicated frames through two disjoint paths and eliminates one copy at the destination node to improve the service reliability. However, it is not always an easy task to find two disjoint paths between the source and destination nodes considering different network topologies and network states. In addition, the FRER mechanism only considers paths with the shortest number of hops without considering the properties of links such as reliability, load, and centrality. This paper proposes a method called Multiple Cascaded Preconfigured Cycles (FRER-MPC) to find two optimized paths for the FRER mechanism in TSN. The FRER-MPC mechanism selects a working path based on the link priority model, and it computes a redundant path through multiple preconfigured cycles. Simulation results show that it effectively improves the path reliability with some extra bandwidth consumptions.