Improvements for time synchronization with 5G transparent clocks

Abstract

Deterministic, time-sensitive communication over integrated wired and wireless networks is one of the key enablers for Industry 4.0 and future factories, with current efforts in research and standardization focusing on integrating 5G and TSN. However, enabling the required interaction between two separate and different networks also introduces new issues. We focus on the disparity of the 5G System behaving as a single logical TSN Bridge for the sake of this integration. In this paper we investigate how to reduce the time synchronization errors caused by the 5G Systems approach to interacting with the TSN network. An ns-3 based simulation of an integrated 5G – TSN network is used to validate the proposed improvements.