Formal worst-case timing analysis of Ethernet TSN´s time-aware and peristaltic shapers

Ethernet is considered as a future communication standard for distributed embedded systems in the automotive and industrial domains. A key challenge is the deterministic low-latency transport of Ethernet frames, as many safety-critical real-time applications in these domains have tight timing requirements. Time-sensitive networking (TSN) is an upcoming set of Ethernet standards, which (among other things) address these requirements by specifying new quality of service mechanisms in the form of different traffic shapers. In this paper, we consider TSN´s time-aware and peristaltic shapers and evaluate whether these shapers are able to fulfill these strict timing requirements. We present a formal timing analysis, which is a key requirement for the adoption of Ethernet in safety-critical real-time systems, to derive worst-case latency bounds for each shaper. We use a realistic automotive Ethernet setup to compare these shapers to each other and against Ethernet following IEEE 802.1Q.