A Migration Strategy for Profinet Toward Ethernet TSN-Based Field-Level Communication

The next era of industrial communication is said to be based on Ethernet time-sensitive networking (TSN). Current migration strategies enable a communication of existing industrial Ethernet (IE) devices over Ethernet TSN networks. Isochronous communication based on scheduled traffic and a free topology choice are mostly not possible for these devices. This work approaches an improved migration strategy that includes a new bridge mode called time-aware forwarding ( TAF ) that is compatible with Ethernet TSN and that can be implemented with existing Profinet hardware. It enables scheduled traffic and a free topology choice for existing devices at the same time.