The Age of Information: Real-Time Status Updating by Multiple Sources

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive framework for analyzing the Age of Information in systems with multiple sources, providing new formulas and techniques for evaluating real-time status update timeliness.

Contribution

It develops a general AoI metric applicable to various queueing systems and introduces a simplified method for AoI evaluation in finite-state queueing models.

Findings

Derived the feasible average age region for multiple sources.

Provided a new technique for AoI evaluation in finite-state queues.

Characterized how shared service facilities impact source update ages.

Abstract

We examine multiple independent sources providing status updates to a monitor through simple queues. We formulate an Age of Information (AoI) timeliness metric and derive a general result for the AoI that is applicable to a wide variety of multiple source service systems. For first-come first-served and two types of last-come first-served systems with Poisson arrivals and exponential service times, we find the region of feasible average status ages for multiple updating sources. We then use these results to characterize how a service facility can be shared among multiple updating sources. A new simplified technique for evaluating the AoI in finite-state continuous-time queueing systems is also derived. Based on stochastic hybrid systems, this method makes AoI evaluation to be comparable in complexity to finding the stationary distribution of a finite-state Markov chain.