Fault-tolerant Ethernet networks with Audio and Video Bridging

Industrial Ethernet networks are now a common feature on today´s factory floors. Vendor-specific technologies, such as Profinet IRT, have demonstrated Ethernet networks with hard real-time (RT) properties. Specified by the IEEE, the Audio and Video Bridging (AVB) technology promises a standardized approach to RT Ethernet. However, AVB has been conceived for other application fields, e.g. home entertainment systems. Several aspects necessary for AVB´s potential use in industrial automation solutions are not covered by the standard. One important aspect is the usage of redundant communication paths to increase fault tolerance. In this paper, a method of achieving redundancy with AVB is proposed. It has been verified through simulation and has been proposed to the AVB Task Group for use in future revisions of the standard.