Adaptive Bridge: A Proxy-Based Decoupling Layer for Mitigating DDS Backpressure in ROS 2
Adaptive Bridge proxy isolates degraded ROS 2 DDS subscribers, cutting critical p95 tail latency from up to 15 seconds to 1.55 milliseconds.
In ROS 2 systems using DDS, a single impaired RELIABLE-topic subscriber can create backpressure that degrades throughput and latency for all subscribers sharing a publisher, including safety-critical ones. Adaptive Bridge acts as a proxy that splits topics and republishes to independent RELIABLE and BEST EFFORT DDS writers, isolating degraded nodes while a probe-based classifier monitors subscriber health and dynamically adjusts rate limits with hysteresis. Under a Gilbert-Elliott bursty wireless loss model in a reproducible Docker harness, the critical subscriber tail p95 latency falls from up to 15 s to 1.55 ms across all impairment severities. This robotics systems work is tangential to the cyber/AI dashboard scope.
- Proxy layer decouples critical from degraded ROS 2 DDS subscribers
- Topic splitting plus dynamic rate control isolates backpressure effects
- Probe-based classifier monitors subscriber health with hysteresis
- Evaluated with Gilbert-Elliott wireless loss model in Docker harness
- Cuts critical p95 tail latency from 15 s to 1.55 ms
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In systems built on Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) and using Data Distribution Service (DDS), a single network-impaired or throttled subscriber on a RELIABLE topic can cause backpressure that degrades throughput and latency for all other subscribers, including safety-critical ones sharing the publisher, because the publisher's DDS writer can no longer accept new samples. We present Adaptive Bridge, a proxy-based layer that decouples critical subscribers from degraded or noncritical ones, thereby isolating the critical path through topic splitting and dynamic rate control. The proxy acts as a middleman and subscribes to the original topic and republishes the messages to two independent DDS writers: one RELIABLE writer for critical nodes and one BEST EFFORT writer for noncritical or degraded nodes, thus isolating the degraded nodes and safeguarding the publisher and critical nodes from backpressure. A probe-based classifier actively monitors subscriber health through sampling with hysteresis and adjusts subscriber rate limits in real time. We evaluate the system under a Gilbert-Elliott bursty wireless loss model using a reproducible Docker-based harness. The results show that using the Adaptive Bridge in our evaluation harness reduces the critical subscriber tail p95 latency from up to 15 s to 1.55 ms across all impairment severities while preserving the publisher's configured throughput.
Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://huggingface.co/papers/2608.15380