Efficient AVB-aware Scheduling for Critical Traffic in Time-sensitive Networks

Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) enables deterministic mixed-criticality communication over standard Ethernet through time-aware scheduling (IEEE 802.1Qbv) for Scheduled Traffic (ST) and via Credit-Based Shaping (CBS) for Audio-Video Bridging (AVB) traffic. Existing scheduling methods often prioritize ST schedules and require iterative feedback loops between ST-schedule generation and AVB schedulability analysis to ensure the timing of both classes. We propose a novel approach called EAST (Efficient AVB-aware Scheduling for TSN) that improves runtime and schedulability by introducing a constraint-driven approach that decouples AVB analysis from ST schedule synthesis. We first perform a Worst-Case Response Time (WCRT) analysis to determine the maximum ST interference each AVB stream can tolerate without missing its deadline. This interference bound is then translated into temporal constraints on the ST scheduler, ensuring that both ST and AVB traffic remain schedulable without requiring multiple iterations of generating ST schedules and checking AVB schedulability. The resulting formulation guarantees end-to-end latency bounds for both ST and AVB streams while drastically reducing schedule synthesis time. Synthetic and real-world test cases show that EAST reduces runtime by several orders of magnitude compared to prior methods, while maintaining or improving overall schedulability.