SDN-Based Management Solution for Time Synchronization in TSN Networks

As a key standard in Time Sensitive Networking (TSN), IEEE 802.1AS (hereafter referred to as simply AS) allows network devices to synchronize their clocks with high precision. Therefore, IEEE 802.1AS is expected to have an important role in the future industrial networks, especially to support Zero-Defect Manufacturing and Autonomous Quality. However, managing and configuring AS are challening works because they require to take into account various AS parameters and network information (e.g., topology, traffic pattern). Moreover, those future networks also require flexibility and reconfigurability, which have important effects such as low time-to-integrate and on- the-fly configuration. In this paper, we utilize Software-Defined Networking (SDN) to propose a solution that manages and configures TSN, focusing on IEEE 802.1AS. SDN is a dynamic network architecture that can support to build a flexible and selfconfigurable solution. The proposed solution is implemented into our SDN-enabled testbed, then verified and analyzed by a number of performance evaluations. The evaluation results show that the solution is able to provides basic/essential functionalities, e.g, managing devices/topology and configuring AS. The TS process, which is configured by the solution, provides highly precise synchronization, on the scale of hundred nanoseconds.