Development of Deterministic Communication for In-Vehicle Networks Based on Software-Defined Time-Sensitive Networking

Abstract

To support more advanced functionality in vehicles, there is the challenge of deterministic and reliable transmission of sensor data and control signals. Time-sensitive networking (TSN) is the most promising candidate to meet this demand by leveraging IEEE 802.1 ethernet standards, which include time synchronization, traffic shaping, and low-latency forwarding mechanisms. To explore the implementation of TSN for in-vehicle networks (IVN), this paper proposes a robust integer linear programming (ILP)-based scheduling model for time-sensitive data streams to mitigate the vulnerabilities of the time-aware shaper (TAS) mechanism in practice. Furthermore, we integrate this scheduling model into a software-defined time-sensitive networking (SD-TSN) architecture to automate the scheduling computations and configurations in the design phase. This SD-TSN architecture can offer a flexible and programmable approach to network management, enabling precise control over timing constraints and quality-of-service (QoS) parameters for time-sensitive traffic. Firstly, data transmission requirements are gathered by the centralized user configuration (CUC) module to acquire traffic information. Subsequently, the CNC module transfers the computed results of routing and scheduling to the YANG model for configuration delivery. Finally, automotive TSN switches can complete local configuration by parsing the received configuration messages. Through an experimental validation based on a physical platform, this study demonstrates the effectiveness of the scheduling algorithm and SD-TSN architecture in enhancing deterministic communication for in-vehicle networks.