Enhancing TSN Adoption by Industry: : Tools to Support Migrating Ethernet-based Legacy Networks into TSN

Sammanfattning: New technologies present opportunities and challenges for industries. One major challenge is the ease, or even feasibility, of its adoption. The Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) standards offer a range of features relevant to various applications and are key for the transition to Industry 4.0. These features include deterministic zero-jitter, low-latency data transmission, transmission of traffic with various levels of time-criticality on the same network, fault tolerance mechanisms, and advanced network management allowing dynamic reconfiguration.This thesis aims to develop tools that enable the industry to adopt TSN easily and efficiently. Specifically, we create tools that facilitate the migration of legacy networks to TSN, enabling the preservation of most of the legacy systems and solutions while reducing costs and adoption time. Firstly, we introduce LETRA (Legacy Ethernet-based Traffic Mapping Tool), a tool for mapping Ethernet-based legacy traffic to the new TSN traffic classes. Secondly, we develop HERMES (Heuristic Multi-queue Scheduler), a heuristic Time-Triggered (TT) traffic scheduler that can meet the characteristics of legacy systems and provide quick results suitable for reconfiguration. Thirdly, we develop TALESS (TSN with Legacy End-Stations Synchronization), a mechanism to avoid adverse consequences caused by the lack of synchronization between legacy systems and TSN-based ones, as not all legacy systems need to support the TSN synchronization mechanisms. Finally, we improve Stream Reservation Protocol (SRP) to enhance Audio-Video Bridging (AVB) traffic configuration in terms of termination and consistency.