Age-of-Information Dependent Random Access for Massive IoT Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel age-dependent random access protocol for massive IoT networks that optimizes information freshness by activating devices based on their current age of information, supported by mathematical analysis and simulations.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new stationary threshold-based age-dependent random access protocol and provides a mathematical framework to evaluate its average age performance.

Findings

The ADRA protocol outperforms existing age-oriented schemes in reducing average AoI.

Mathematical analysis accurately predicts the protocol's performance.

Simulation results confirm the protocol's effectiveness in large IoT networks.

Abstract

As the most well-known application of the Internet of Things (IoT), remote monitoring is now pervasive. In these monitoring applications, information usually has a higher value when it is fresher. A new metric, termed the age of information (AoI), has recently been proposed to quantify the information freshness in various IoT applications. This paper concentrates on the design and analysis of age-oriented random access for massive IoT networks. Specifically, we devise a new stationary threshold-based age-dependent random access (ADRA) protocol, in which each IoT device accesses the channel with a certain probability only when its instantaneous AoI exceeds a predetermined threshold. We manage to evaluate the average AoI of the proposed ADRA protocol mathematically by decoupling the tangled AoI evolution of multiple IoT devices and modeling the decoupled AoI evolution of each device as a Discrete-Time Markov Chain. Simulation results validate our theoretical analysis and affirm the superior age performance of the proposed ADRA protocol over the state-of-the-art age-oriented random access schemes.