Framework for Delay Guarantee in Multi-Domain Networks Based on Interleaved Regulators

Abstract

The key to the asynchronous traffic shaping (ATS) technology being standardized in IEEE 802.1 time sensitive network (TSN) task group (TG) is the theorem that a minimal interleaved regulator (IR), attached to a FIFO system does not increase delay upper bound while suppresses the burst accumulation. In this work it is observed that the FIFO system can be a network for flows that share same input/output ports and same queues of the network, and are treated with a scheduling scheme that guarantees the FIFO property within a queue. Based on this observation, a framework for delay bound guarantee is further proposed, in which the networks with flow aggregates (FAs) scheduling and minimal IRs per FA attached at the network edge are interconnected. The framework guarantees the end-to-end delay bound with reduced complexity, compared to the traditional flow-based approach. Numerical analysis shows that the framework yields smaller bound than both the flow-based frameworks such as the integrated services (IntServ) and the class-based ATS, at least in the networks with identical flows and symmetrical topology.