Open Access

Dominik Welte, Christopher Lehmann, Manuel Schappacher, Thomas Höschele, Axel Sikora, Frank H. P. Fitzek

• Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is becoming increasingly important. Especially in the field of industrial applications, the demand for uniform, converged real-time networks is continuously increasing. Furthermore, the request to integrate wireless, mobile, and real-time capable network elements is getting more and more relevant to industrial automation use cases. To address these requests, the 3rdTime-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is becoming increasingly important. Especially in the field of industrial applications, the demand for uniform, converged real-time networks is continuously increasing. Furthermore, the request to integrate wireless, mobile, and real-time capable network elements is getting more and more relevant to industrial automation use cases. To address these requests, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has extended their specifications for mobile telecommunication protocols by descriptions to integrate 5G mobile networks into TSN starting from Release 16 onwards. While the specifications provide a good theoretical overview, there is still a lack of real implementations or even proof of concepts. Therefore, we started an implementation of a 5G network that is ready to be integrated into existing TSN. This work gives an overview of the current work in progress, mainly focusing on the implementation of the TSN Application Function (TSN AF) and the time synchronization features within the TSN Translators (DS-TT and NW-TT). It also shows current limitations and difficulties and how we have overcome them with our setup.…