Modeling Time Aware Shaping in an Ethernet Fronthaul
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Philippos Assimakopoulos; Nathan J. Gomes; Daniel Muench; Mohamad Kenan Al-Hares
- Source
- GLOBECOM
- Subject
- Ethernet
Computer science
business.industry
05 social sciences
ComputerSystemsOrganization_COMPUTER-COMMUNICATIONNETWORKS
TK7800
050801 communication & media studies
020206 networking & telecommunications
02 engineering and technology
Optical switch
Scheduling (computing)
Fronthaul
0508 media and communications
TK5101
Next-generation network
0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering
business
Precision Time Protocol
Computer network
Jitter
- Language
- English
An Opnet model of a time-aware shaper (TAS) based on the IEEE 802.1Qbv standard is presented. The TAS model is assumed to be the scheduling entity in an Ethernet-based fronthaul network, comprising of Ethernet switches. The fronthaul transports different traffic flow types as envisioned in next generation Radio Access Networks (RANs), including those for a timing protocol (based on the precision time protocol) and those from the implementation of different RAN functional subdivisions. The performance of the TAS is compared to that of a strict priority regime and is quantified through the frame delay variation of the high priority traffic when this contends with lower priority traffic. The results show that with the TAS implementation, contention effects can be overcome and frame delay variation (frame jitter) can be removed. Timing instability in the significant events of the scheduler is considered and a solution to overcome this issue is proposed.