Wireless TSN with Multi-Radio Wi-Fi
Juan Fang, Susruth Sudhakaran, Dave Cavalcanti, Carlos Cordeiro, Cheng Chen
Abstract
Wireless Time Sensitive Networking (WTSN) capabilities enabled by IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) can address time synchronization and deterministic communication requirements for many distributed computing and time-critical applications. In addition to time-synchronization (based on 802.1AS) and time-aware scheduling (based on 802.1 Qbv), which have been demonstrated in prior work, this paper describes an experimental implementation and demonstrates the Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) data path redundancy capability (based on 802.1 CB) over wired (Ethernet) and wireless (Wi- Fi) by leveraging multiple Wi-Fi radios on the same device. Our experiments show that TSN redundancy can be extended seamlessly from Ethernet to Wi-Fi, thus enabling the network to maintain low latency with high reliability even in the presence of unmanaged interference, which is one of the main challenges for TSN operation in unlicensed bands. The paper also describes an approach to enhance TSN redundancy over Wi-Fi by leveraging the multi-link operation being defined in the ongoing IEEE 802.11 be project, which is specifying the next generation Wi- Fi standard.