Towards a TSN-DetNet Intercity Testbed for Tactile Cyber-Physical Systems

We present a TSN-DetNet testbed design for Tactile Cyber-Physical Systems (TCPS) that facilitates Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) and Deterministic Networking (DetNet) standards to provide low-latency and high-reliability communication across two cities separated by 400 kilometres. The core design revolves around two key domains: the CPS domain, encompassing haptic devices, robotic arms, and sensing equipment, and the Tactile Internet domain, comprising TSN-enabled LAN switches and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)-based WAN routers. This configuration ensures the handling of diverse traffic classes, including Scheduled Traffic (ST) for critical tactile data and Best Effort (BE) for non-critical flows. We leverage Precision Time Protocol (PTP) for time synchronization. The paper comprehensively evaluates the testbed's performance metrics, encompassing latency, jitter, packet loss, and time synchronization accuracy. Subsequently, it showcases the practical capabilities of the testbed through a real-world demonstration of a robotic teleoperation application, incorporating haptic and video feedback functionalities. The paper also discusses the challenges of building an intercity TSN-DetNet testbed and future work for using it to demonstrate and evaluate TCPS applications.