Insight into the IEEE 802.1 Qcr Asynchronous Traffic Shaping in Time Sensitive Network

Abstract

TSN is an attractive solution for latency-critical frame transmission built upon IEEE 802 architecture. Traffic scheduling and shaping in TSN aim to achieve bounded low latency and zero congestion loss. However, the most widespread solution (i.e. Time-Aware Shaper) requires a networkwide precision clock reference and only targets on cyclical traffic flows. This paper focuses on the performance evaluation of the ATS, which applies shaping algorithm to any flows and requires no clock reference. Simulations are proposed for evaluation and comparison. Metrics including end-to-end delay, buffer usage and frame loss rate are collected to assess the shaping performance. Results show that ATS achieves effective traffic shaping and switching without synchronous mechanisms, while there is an evident trade-off for using these specific algorithms.