Providing Quality of Service (QoS) to emerging time-sensitive applications such as factory automation, telesurgery, and VR/AR applications is a challenging task [1]. Time Sensitive Networks (TSN) [2] and Deterministic Networks [3] were developed for such applications to guarantee ultra low latency, bounded latency and jitter, and zero congestion loss. The objective of this work is to develop a methodology to guarantee bounded End-to-End (E2E) latency and jitter in large-scale networks.

Voraussetzungen

Autonomous drone swarms are rapidly evolving from a purely academic research topic into a key industrial technology. Application areas range from cooperative surveying and environmental monitoring to search-and-rescue missions, as well as coordinated logistics or inspection tasks in complex environments. All of these applications require a highly precise shared time base with deviations clearly below one millisecond.

At the same time, drone swarms face particular challenges: fluctuating radio channels due to rapid movement, heterogeneous hardware clocks, limited onboard computing resources, GPS shadowing, or targeted jamming/spoofing attacks. The project work to be created contributes to systematically evaluating existing methods for their suitability in this demanding domain and to outlining a prototypical solution.

The goal of this project is to identify suitable mechanisms for time synchronisation in heterogeneous drone swarms, to evaluate them comparatively, and to implement at least one method in a prototype and verify it experimentally.

To this end, an application-oriented requirements profile should first be created and the state of the art analysed. The most promising approach is then to be implemented in a simulation or on a real or emulated UAV testbed. Finally, the measurement results, regarding synchronisation accuracy, robustness, overhead, and scalability, are to be documented, and recommendations for future swarm systems derived.

Deterministic, low-latency communication for time-sensitive data is a critical challenge in industrial and automotive networks. IEEE introduced the Ethernet standards Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) to address these requirements. Using traffic prioritization and scheduling, TSN enables deterministic, reliable, and low-latency communication. However, industry 4.0 has intensified the need for mobility, such as using Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs). To meet these demands, 5G must be integrated into TSN systems.
To explore the integration of 5G and TSN, a TSN-5G testbed is build to evaluate end-to-end schedulers and reliability concepts.

The Wireless Sensor Networks lab offers the opportunity to develop software solutions for the wireless sensor networking system, targeting innovative applications. For the next semester, a position is available to assist the participants in learning the programming environment and during the project development phase. The lab is planned to be held on-site every Tuesday 15:00 to 17:00.

Voraussetzungen