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Projecte llegit

Títol: Testing and improvement of an integrated testbed for Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) and 5G/6G networks

Estudiants que han llegit aquest projecte:

Director/a: RINCÓN RIVERA, DAVID

Departament: ENTEL

Títol: Testing and improvement of an integrated testbed for Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) and 5G/6G networks

Data inici oferta: 21-07-2025     Data finalització oferta: 21-03-2026


Estudis d'assignació del projecte:
    MU MASTEAM 2015
Tipus: Individual
 
Lloc de realització: EETAC
 
Segon director/a (UPC): AGUSTÍ TORRA, ANNA
 
Paraules clau:
TSN, 5G, QUECTEL, AMARISOFT, OPEN5GS, CNC
 
Descripció del contingut i pla d'activitats:
Time-sensitive Networking is a recent technology for transmission of real-time information. It is basically a time-slotted version of Ethernet.

It can be applied to many fields: telecommunication operators (5G/6G, cloud-RAN), industrial communications (industry 4.0), communication buses in space vehicles, airplanes, automobiles and trains, and audiovisual communication networks (radio and TV production). More details can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-Sensitive_Networking

5G/6G networks are also starting to be used in industrial communications. Therefore, some kind of gateway between TSN and 5G/6G is needed, and that is the role of the recently defined 5G User Plane Function (UPF) and TSN Translator (TT) function. For more details, see https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2021/2/how-5g-integrates-tsn-systems

This thesis will include:

- Restart and testing of a 5G-TSN testbed developed in previous projects
- Adding more functionalities in various aspects: optimization module, emulation of the 5G radio channel.
- Testing the prototype, obtain results, and describe them in a technical report/paper.

We will build on the results from previous theses:

https://upcommons.upc.edu/handle/2117/392883
 
Overview (resum en anglès):
This thesis presents the testing and improvement of an integrated Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) and 5G testbed for deterministic industrial communications. The work extends a previous UPC platform by replacing the emulated radio segment with a real RF link based on an Amarisoft gNB and a Quectel 5G UE, while Open5GS provides the 5G Core and Relyum devices implement the TSN domain. The implementation focuses on configuring and validating the main control-plane and user-plane elements required to operate the updated testbed. On the TSN side, this includes synchronization, LLDP-based topology discovery, VLAN/PCP traffic differentiation, and Time-Aware Shaper configuration. On the 5G side, it includes Amarisoft gNB integration, Open5GS configuration, UE subscriber provisioning, registration, PDU session establishment, and dedicated QoS Flow Identifier verification.
The experimental evaluation shows that introducing a real RF segment increases the delay with respect to the previous UERANSIM-based version, as expected, because the communication path now includes real radio transmission, UE processing, gNB scheduling, and link-adaptation effects. The comparison between bridge-delay and end-to-end-delay measurements also shows that the dominant additional latency is introduced inside the 5G/RF segment, while the contribution of the TSN islands and the external wired path remains comparatively small.
The capacity and video-transmission tests show that the updated testbed can operate as a realistic RF-based 5G--TSN experimental platform, but also that its behavior is strongly affected by the available RF capacity and by the configuration of the 5G QoS flows. Under excessive sustained background traffic, the gNB can enter a congestion state that produces severe packet loss and affects subsequent measurements until the system is recovered. After reducing the offered load and using stable QFI parameters, the testbed is able to transport the high-priority video stream with low packet loss.
Since the available Open5GS setup does not support Ethernet PDU sessions, an IP-based adaptation is used to interconnect the TSN islands through the 5G system. This allows practical QoS differentiation through packet filters and QFI mapping, but it does not yet provide a complete 3GPP 5G--TSN implementation with native Ethernet PDU sessions and full DS-TT/NW-TT behavior. Therefore, the thesis also reviews QoS mapping and determinism mechanisms in 5G--TSN systems, identifying the implemented testbed as an intermediate but functional step toward future Ethernet-PDU-based and TSC-aware 5G--TSN implementations.

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