Schedulability analysis of time aware shaper with preemption supported in time-sensitive networks

To establish a unified networking technology for time- and safety-critical applications such as industrial control systems, the Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) Working Group has proposed a series of protocols that introduce new features for TSN-enabled switches and end stations. Notably, the IEEE 802.1Qbv and Qbu standards incorporate the Time-Aware Shaper (TAS) and frame preemption mechanisms, which collectively provide low-latency guarantees for time-sensitive traffic. Deterministic communication constitutes a fundamental requirement for real-time critical systems. However, jitter at end stations remains unavoidable under certain circumstances. This necessitates the establishment of worst-case latency bounds for all network flows. Against this background, this paper presents a formal timing analysis method for TAS networks with preemption under different configurations. The proposed methodology is subsequently refined by accounting for the impacts of multi-hop architectures. Finally, a scheduler is built to determine the delay upper bound and the performance of this approach is validated through comparative evaluations with OMNeT++ simulation results across three distinct scenarios.