StreamRTPS: Increasing DDS Bandwidth Efficiency by Reducing Protocol Overhead

2026-06-12

AI Summary

This work addresses the low bandwidth efficiency of the DDS/RTPS protocol caused by substantial header overhead. To mitigate this issue while preserving full RTPS compatibility and transmission latency, the authors propose three interoperable optimization mechanisms: negotiating static headers during the discovery phase and replacing runtime full headers with lightweight stream identifiers, aggregating data payloads destined for the same address, and predictively suppressing redundant heartbeat messages based on periodic communication patterns. Evaluated under both best-effort and reliable transport semantics, the approach significantly improves bandwidth utilization—reducing protocol overhead by 27.9% in best-effort mode and achieving an additional 22.7% reduction under reliable transmission.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose three extensions to the Real-Time Publish Subscribe wire protocol, on which Data Distribution Service (DDS) is based, to improve bandwidth efficiency. First, a stream negotiation mechanism exchanges static header information during discovery, replacing the full RTPS header at runtime with a compact 2 B identifier. Second, a payload aggregation scheme aggregates samples for the same locator into single UDP packets, reducing IP and UDP header costs. Third, a predictive heartbeat suppression strategy reduces control traffic by omitting heartbeats for periodic communication patterns, falling back upon detected loss or timing violations. All three mechanisms preserve Real-Time Publish Subscribe(RTPS) compatibility by extending DDS discovery to activate these features when supported. Experimental results show that stream headers reduce bandwidth consumption by up to 27.9 % compared to conventional RTPS under best-effort transport, and that heartbeat suppression yields a further 22.7 % reduction on top of stream headers under reliable transport, while preserving transmission latency in both cases.

Problem

• DDS
• RTPS
• bandwidth efficiency
• protocol overhead
• real-time communication

Innovation

• RTPS
• bandwidth efficiency
• header compression
• payload aggregation
• heartbeat suppression