[Invited Paper] Time Gating Control Approaches for Time Critical Applications from Perspective of Wireless LANs and All Optical Networks

In recent years, with the proliferation of diverse time-critical applications, there is a growing need for technologies that can limit packet transmission delays within acceptable bounds while also maintaining low packet loss rates. This paper addresses this challenge by introducing the concept of Time-Gating Control. In particular, it aims to maintain compatibility with existing information network infrastructures like TCP/IP and CSMA/CA, ensuring low cost and high scalability. Initially, the paper focuses on wireless access networks in smart factory environments, proposing a method that introduces a hierarchical time-unit structure for periodic traffic, such as sensor data and surveillance video. This method determines time widths for the overlap-free transmission of varied periodic communications, thereby facilitating temporal load distribution. We present results from functional verification tests conducted using a software prototype in this environment. Furthermore, as a solution for non-pediodic traffic with permissive delay constraints, an overview of a virtual slot-based CSMA/CA method is introduced. In addition, targeting completely different applications, we explore the implementation of Time-Gating Control in All Optical Packet Switching Networks within Beyond 5G access-metro and data center networks. Here, we design a new TCP transmission method incorporating this control mechanism and discuss its advantages and superior performance.