Formation and Assertion of Data Unit Groups in 3GPP Networks with TSN and PDU Set Support

"Industrial applications and Extended Reality vertical sectors have expressed the need for dedicated Quality of Service considerations by 3GPP to support time-sensitive and bursty high throughput communications, respectively. Consequently, 3GPP enabled support for Time-Sensitive Networking in Release 17 and started specifying the concept around Packet Data Unit Sets in Release 19. This paper presents a novel solution for any IP-based communication enabling time-sensitive communication while utilising 3GPP Packet Data Unit Set feature. This paper proposes extensions to the IP header for a more universal approach. The proposed solutions introduce the concept of a Data Unit Group to describe the entirety of an Application Data Unit and its fragmentation into individual IP packets to be delivered over a packet-switched network. The disclosure defines Data Unit Group Rules to communicate packet header detection and action rules in Time-Sensitive Networking switches to prioritise and re-order/pre-empt packets and to write Packet Data Unit Set Markings in User Equipments and User Plane Functions."