Data, connectivity and interoperability - "these factors will trigger a wave of disruption in all industries." Gary Martz opened the TSN/A Conference with this prophecy in his keynote speech. The Director of Industrial IoT Standards at Intel is certain that the future interaction of device ecosystems, applications and services will lead to massive growth in the industrial markets. However, Martz also points out that this will not only require individual standards. Rather, the complexity of today's systems often requires several levels of standards to ensure the interoperability of different applications and protocols in a common network.

Florian Bonanati, board member of the 5G-ACIA Group, then draws the audience's attention to the connection between 5G and TSN. "On the one hand, TSN is becoming increasingly attractive, while at the same time wireless communication is gaining in importance as a crucial basic technology," argues Bonanati. "However, the existing standard wireless technology cannot meet the high requirements in terms of real-time, robustness, security and time synchronization, which is why 5G is currently the subject of much discussion among experts."

Thomas Gleixner from Linutronix delves deeper into the spheres of technology. He reports that Linux in particular has developed into one of the most powerful operating systems for embedded devices. In addition to the large number of supported drivers and components, it is known for its networking capabilities. Many TSN-related functions and network extensions are already on their way to Linux and some of them are already available in the mainline kernel. Gleixner also gave an overview of the existing TSN-related components in the Linux kernel, the discussions about possible new features that will soon make it into Linux, and the gaps that still need to be closed.

Before the second day of the conference is divided into the two subject areas of automotive and industrial, Ludwig Winkel from Siemens and Janos Farkas from Ericsson will report on the standardization work of the IEEE Standards Association and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on a single TSN profile in industry. The joint project on the IEC/IEEE 60802 standard defines time-sensitive network profiles for industrial automation to ensure interoperability and easy deployment. The profiles select functions, options, configurations, default values, protocols and procedures for bridges, end stations and LANs in order to set up networks for industrial automation.

The automotive part is then dedicated to the challenges of implementing TSN within the automotive E/E architecture: the dimensioning of TSN and AVB for use in autonomous vehicles and the question of how time-critical ADAS applications in the automotive sector can be realized with Ethernet IP TSN.

TSN plus OPC UA - the industry standard?

The Industrial session, on the other hand, will focus on overcoming the ongoing fieldbus war in industrial automation. In the introductory keynote discussion, representatives of the various fieldbuses will report on their migration plans to TSN. In this context, the question arises again and again: Will the dream of a uniform industrial network standard become reality?

The OPC Foundation could play an important role in realizing this vision. Tom Burke and Matthias Damm from the OPC Foundation describe the results and status of the OPC Foundation's active working groups that are relevant to OPC UA over TSN. They go on to explain how these activities are coordinated with other organizations and why the OPC Foundation would also be predestined to take on further tasks in a possible establishment of a TSN plus OPC UA standard.

The presentation by Dr. Dietmar Bruckner, B&R, makes it clear that such a TSN plus OPC UA standard does not have to fail due to technical feasibility. He compares the performance characteristics of OPC UA TSN for field use with today's Industrial Ethernet solutions. He discusses the most important HW and SW design elements that affect the achievable performance and functionality of OPC UA and TSN and that make it possible to meet the requirements. And finally, he shows that OPC UA TSN circuits and interfaces can be designed to meet and exceed fieldbus performance with a competitive footprint using the latest chip technologies.