Distributed Multi-link Operation (MLO) for Frame Replication in Wireless Time-Sensitive Networking

Wireless Time-Sensitive Networking (WTSN) faces challenges to ensure communication reliability without compromising communication latency. As communication in wireless link happens in the same channel, frame replication and elimination for reliability (FRER) in different bands or channels is not possible in the wireless part. However, with the new features like multi-link operation (MLO), FRER can be enabled in wireless links as well, improving the overall reliability of the communication. In this paper, we show how we achieve distributed MLO utilizing openwifi platform and wired TSN for synchronized transmission in multiple links. We show initial results of end-to-end reliability and latency when MLO is utilized under different traffic load levels on each operational link. We also show the effect of cross-node physical layer queue management for avoiding head-of-the-line queue blocking.