# Age of Information Performance of Multiaccess Strategies with Packet Management

## TL;DR

This paper analyzes the age of information in a multiaccess system with multiple sources, examining how scheduled and random access strategies, along with packet management techniques like packet replacement, affect information freshness.

## Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of AoI performance considering different access protocols and packet management strategies, including new insights into packet replacement effects.

## Key findings

- Packet management improves AoI under certain conditions
- Scheduled access can outperform random access in maintaining freshness
- Packet replacement reduces AoI by discarding stale packets

## Abstract

We consider a system consisting of $N$ source nodes communicating with a common receiver. Each source node has a buffer of infinite capacity to store incoming bursty traffic in the form of status updates transmitted in packets, which should maintain the status information at the receiver fresh. Packets waiting for transmission can be discarded to avoid wasting network resources for the transmission of stale information. We investigate the age of information (AoI) performance of the system under scheduled and random access. Moreover, we present analysis of the AoI with and without packet management at the transmission queue of the source nodes, where as packet management we consider the capability to replace unserved packets at the queue whenever newer ones arrive. Finally, we provide simulation results that illustrate the impact of the network operating parameters on the age performance of the different access protocols.