Bounding Traffic Generation Jitter in Wireless TSN Using Real-Time Operating Systems

Abstract

Industrial automation requires strict network determinism across wired and wireless links. Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) offers a solution to this problem. However, current research mostly focuses on traffic scheduling while ignoring traffic generation and processing. Unreliable frame processing breaks true end-to-end predictability. This paper evaluates a deterministic real-time operating system to manage traffic generation. The real-time operating system is tested against a standard general-purpose operating system in terms of alignment between the generation time and scheduling mechanism in the TSN. The experiments span both wired Ethernet and wireless architectures, proving that the real-time operating system drastically reduces generation jitter. Furthermore, time-synchronized frame generation aligns perfectly with the transmission window, decreasing one-way latency. These findings highlight the advantage of integrating real-time systems at the edge of TSN.