Ultra Low Latency Audio Networking for Road-Noise-Cancellation Applications in Zonalised Vehicle Architectures

Hall P, Chandler Page M. Ultra Low Latency Audio Networking for Road-Noise-Cancellation Applications in Zonalised Vehicle Architectures. In: 2026 AES 6th International Automotive Audio Conference. Audio Engineering Society; 2026. Paper 25. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23418

@inproceedings{Hall2026_23418,
  author = {Hall, Peter and Chandler Page, Michael},
  title = {{Ultra Low Latency Audio Networking for Road-Noise-Cancellation Applications in Zonalised Vehicle Architectures}},
  booktitle = {2026 AES 6th International Automotive Audio Conference},
  note = {Paper 25},
  year = {2026},
  month = jul,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23418}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Ultra Low Latency Audio Networking for Road-Noise-Cancellation Applications in Zonalised Vehicle Architectures
AU  - Hall, Peter
AU  - Chandler Page, Michael
T2  - 2026 AES 6th International Automotive Audio Conference
M1  - Paper 25
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/07/29
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23418
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - This paper evaluates whether a converged in-vehicle Ethernet network can satisfy the latency requirements of active road-noise cancellation in zonal vehicle architectures, concurrently with traffic for other vehicle applications. Legacy Audio Video Bridging guidance often assumes approximately 2 ms network latency, but that assumption was derived from seven switch-hops of 100 Mb/second Ethernet and does not represent envisaged 2030s vehicle networks. For a representative road-noise-cancellation loop, we show that a latency target of less than 300 _s is required between transducer and DSP. Under representative traffic assumptions, a Time Sensitive Networking path with high-rate links and short maximum-priority frames can achieve calculated network transit latency of about 39.1 _s, corresponding to about 164 _s including the 125 _s audio frame-interval buffer. Laboratory measurements with two 1000Base-T1 Time Sensitive Networking switches show a worst-case transit of 44 _s, and a hardware end-point demonstrator achieves less than 200 _s end-to-end. The results indicate that a converged Ethernet architecture can support the complete range of automotive use cases, including ultra-lowlatency streams for road-noise cancellation.
ER  -