Enabling Low Latency for ECQF based Flow Aggregation Scheduling in Time-Sensitive Networking

Cyclic Queuing and Forwarding (CQF) configures the same cycle length on the flow path, resulting in certain flows unschedulable. Enhanced CQF (ECQF) based flow aggregation utilizes variable cycle length to address this issue. However, it remains a conceptual model without a concrete implementation. In this paper, we propose a jointly optimize aggregation cycle and flows' offsets (JACO) mechanism to achieve ECQF-based flow aggregation. We also design an incremental heuristic algorithm for JACO. Finally, we evaluate the performance of JACO in different scenarios using OMNet++ simulation platform. Compared with ECQF, the results show that JACO reduces latency and improves resource utilization.