On the September 28th 2021, the Industrial Internet Network Innovation Conference hosted by the Ministry of Chinese Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and jointly undertaken by China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), and Alliance of Industrial Internet (AII) took place in Beijing.

At the meeting, CAICT officially released the "Joint 5G+TSN Testbed" project, which aims to explore the integration of 5G and TSN technologies, industry application adaptation, and verification of new industrial communication scenarios. The project is led by CAICT, with the joint participation of Qualcomm, Intel, China Mobile, Nokia Bell, New H3C, Huawei and AILINK.

TSN: Time Sensitive Networking；The Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) Task Group (TG) is a part of the IEEE 802.1 Working Group (WG) of which aims to provide deterministic connectivity through IEEE 802 networks, i.e., guaranteed packet transport with bounded latency, low packet delay variation, and low packet loss.

According to Ao Li, chief engineer of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the 5G+TSN joint testbed will provide a test environment for the integration and application of 5G and TSN technologies, and explore the upper boundary of deterministic networks in industrial usage, as well as provide technical verification for industrial applications such as flexible manufacturing and coherent production among industrial automation machines.

As shown in the figure above, the 5G system can be integrated with the TSN network. AILINK develops and provides 5G system products such as 5GC core network in accordance with 3GPP standards, and supports TSN-related functional modules. In the test bed program organized by the CAICT，the 5G private network provided by AILINK can can form an e2e 5G+TSN test environment with the industrial equipment, 5G industrial gateways, and industrial platforms deployed in the TSN network domain. This 5G+TSN test environment can be used to test and verify indicators such as data collection, equipment control, e2e time latency, and e2e reliability.

"TSN has very strong real-time performance characteristics that can control the timing accuracy to the microsecond level, and its combination of 5G edge intelligence will push the boundary of Industrial Internet."  Dr. Yu Yifan, CTO of AILINK stated. 

According to Dr. Yu Yifan, 5G introduces a redefined scheme for low latency and resource management to provide ultra-high reliability and low latency network characteristics, which can coexist with TSN and meet the harsh requirements data transmission in industrial production process. Further, 5G can support flexible uplink scheduling and precise time synchronization, which will strengthen the further support for TSN traffic. AILINK has carried out research and practice on the characteristics of TSN in the field of industrial 5G. This time, AILINK together with other major industrial players together contribute to the creation of the “Joint 5G+TSN Testbed" to further push the ecosystem moving forward!