Analysis and Verification of Safety-Critical TSN Networks

Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is an emerging technology that has garnered popularity among the US DoD and others for its deterministic properties while using flexible, ubiquitous Ethernet as its core. However, individual TSN devices will support the TSN features of only some of the vast array of amendments and extensions that make up the full IEEE 802 TSN standards. This functional and modular approach offers great flexibility, but it also increases the complexity of network planning, analysis, verification, etc. as well as potentially leading to unexpected emergent behavior that must be addressed before a TSN network can be truly said to be qualified for use with safety-critical systems. Using industry experience gained certifying other deterministic networks to DO-254 and DO-178C Design Assurance Level A (DAL-A) and applying it to the analysis, testing, and validation of a deterministic TSN Ethernet digital backbone offers a roadmap for overcoming these challenges. Such an approach must seek to satisfy the three basic building-blocks of 1) Device-Level Standards Conformance, 2) System-Level Performance and Interoperability, and 3) Network Composability and Determinism.