Time Sensitive Networking Testbed with Wireless Real-Time Connectivity via Li-Fi and Energy Efficiency Analysis

This work demonstrates a time sensitive network (TSN) testbed, for wired and wireless industrial connectivity by employing real-time optical wireless communications (OWC). The aim of this testbed is to identify the energy consumption of each individual OWC system relative to its utilization rate. The TSN-based testbed is a standardized, controlled environment where network parameters such as network utilization can be varied and monitored, allowing the user to easily test different devices. The Testbed combines a wide range of TSN standards with bidirectional full-duplex 1 Gbps traffic along with precise energy and latency measurement, thus constituting a novel approach. The present study analyzes and compares three OWC systems within the testbed to identify potential energy savings and providing relevant benchmark results and data points for future studies. The OWC devices are characterized by their energy efficiency per bit. One of the three OWC transceivers is optimized within this work, resulting in a 27.5% energy reduction under light network loads.