Network Planning for Time-Sensitive Communications

Network planning is a critical process in the construction of communication networks. Time-sensitive communications require networks with time-aware scheduling and transmission mechanisms to guarantee the deterministic requirements of services, which is difficult to be satisfied by traditional network planning. This article proposes an SDN-enabled network planning solution for time-sensitive communications. Specifically, the solution introduces a layered network architecture by decoupling network planes with different functions, designs a planning strategy for deterministic services, and sorts out a time-sensitive network planning procedure that integrates topology construction, routing, and traffic scheduling. This article uses the scalefree topology construction method to construct delay-bounded network topology. Experimental results show that the solution can guarantee the bounded delay, improve the schedulability, and reduce the algorithm runtime. In addition, the solution is able to utilize network resources according to the capacity of each node.