An Improved Worst-Case Response Time Analysis for AVB Traffic in Time-Sensitive Networks

Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) has become one of the most relevant communication networks in many application areas. Among several traffic classes supported by TSN networks, Audio-Video Bridging (AVB) traffic requires a Worst-Case Response Time Analysis (WCRTA) to ensure that AVB frames meet their time requirements. In this paper, we evaluate the existing WCRTAs that cover various features of TSN, including Scheduled Traffic (ST) interference and preemption. When considering the effect of the ST interference, we detect optimism problems in two of the existing WCRTAs, namely (i) the analysis based on the busy period calculation and (ii) the analysis based on the eligible interval. Therefore, we propose a new analysis including a new ST interference calculation that can extend the analysis based on the eligible interval approach. The new analysis covers the effect of the ST interference, the preemption by the ST traffic, and the multi-hop architecture. The resulting WCRTA, while safe, shows a significant improvement in terms of pessimism level compared to the existing analysis approaches relying on either the concept of busy period or the Network Calculus model.