Key technologies to enable 5G and TSN coordination for industrial automation

Applying fifth-generation mobile communication networks (5G) and time-sensitive networking (TSN) has become a new trend in industrial automation. As the new generation of mobile communication technology, 5G is featured with a large bandwidth, low latency, ultrareliable connection, and multiservice slicing capacities. As the evolution goal of industrial ethernet, TSN is featured with a deterministic transmission with bounded latency and jitter and guaranteed high reliability. Both technologies have been designed to provide converged communication for various services on common network infrastructure. 5G and TSN coordination can effectively promote the integration of Information Technology (IT) and operational technologies (OT), which will be a key enabler of the industrial internet. Therefore, the collaborative transmission of 5G and TSN has become a focus for the industry and academe. “5G + TSN” is envisioned to be the basic communication network for future smart factories, which can integrate various field-level industrial communication technologies and ensure end-to-end industrial data transmission reliability. However, 5G and TSN networks are different in the transmission methods, protocols, control and management mechanisms, etc. How to realize an efficient interconnection and coordination of 5G and TSN is a hot topic and difficult task currently. Following the general requirements of digital, digital-networked, and new-generation intelligent manufacturing, this article first introduced the state-of-the-art of time-sensitive networks, and it also elaborated on the standardization progress of 5G supporting TSN in 3GPP. This work then emphasized the main challenges for the coordinated transmission of 5G and TSN networks and analyzed key technologies such as time synchronization, connection enhancement, and unified resource management to support the coordination of 5G and TSN heterogeneous networks. Finally, the application scenarios of “5G + TSN” in a smart factory were given, aiming to deepen the integration of 5G into industrial control and flourish 5G-based industrial applications.