Time-Sensitive Networking Standards

Abstract

The seven articles in this special section focus on time sensitive networking (TSN), an IEEE 802.1 standard. TSN makes it possible to carry data traffic of time-critical and/or mission- critical applications over a bridged Ethernet network shared by various kinds of applications having different Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, i.e., time and/or mission critical TSN traffic and non-TSN best effort traffic. TSN provides guaranteed data transport with bounded low latency, low delay variation, and extremely low data loss for time and/or mission critical traffic. By reserving resources for critical traffic, and applying various queuing and shaping techniques, TSN achieves zero congestion loss for critical data traffic. This, in turn, allows TSN to guarantee a worst-case end-to-end latency for critical data. TSN also provides ultra-reliability for data traffic via a data packet level reliability mechanism as well as protection against bandwidth violation, malfunctioning, malicious attacks, etc. TSN includes reliable time synchronization, a profile of IEEE 1588, which provides the basis for many other TSN functions.