Emulation vs. Reality: Hardware/Software Co-Design in Emulated and Real Time-sensitive Networks

The fifth generation of wireless communication networks (5G) is characterized by having strict latency requirements for the transmission of data packets inside network nodes. Consequently, it was required the development of standard technology that delivers deterministic behaviour in terms of latency for real-time applications. Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is a standard and centrally managed technology, which ensures guarantees of delivery and reduces queuing delay to its minimum by scheduling data packets on standard Ethernet. Nevertheless, the design and development of real TSN-based applications relies on the usage of specialized high-performance hardware, which inhibits its massive utilisation due to its high price tag. Therefore, in this paper we demonstrate that by emulating the functionalities of TSN on virtual networks, the function of the physical hardware can be replicated while the deployment cost can be sunk considerably. We compare our software-based solution in terms of jitter and delay to hardware-based TSN implementations and state-of-the-art Software Defined Networks (SDNs) development platforms.