WiFresh: Age-of-Information from Theory to Implementation

TL;DR

WiFresh is a novel architecture that significantly improves information freshness in wireless networks, especially under congestion, by leveraging theoretical insights and implementing strategies at both MAC and application layers.

Contribution

This paper introduces WiFresh, a new architecture that enhances Age-of-Information in wireless networks, combining theoretical foundations with practical implementation strategies.

Findings

WiFresh improves information freshness by two orders of magnitude.

WiFresh maintains near-optimal freshness even under network overload.

Two implementation strategies for WiFresh are demonstrated at different network layers.

Abstract

Emerging applications, such as smart factories and fleets of drones, increasingly rely on sharing time-sensitive information for monitoring and control. In such application domains, it is essential to keep information fresh, as outdated information loses its value and can lead to system failures and safety risks. The Age-of-Information is a performance metric that captures how fresh the information is from the perspective of the destination. In this paper, we show that as the congestion in the wireless network increases, the Age-of-Information degrades sharply, leading to outdated information at the destination. Leveraging years of theoretical research, we propose WiFresh: an unconventional architecture that achieves near optimal information freshness in wireless networks of any size, even when the network is overloaded. Our experimental results show that WiFresh can improve information freshness by two orders of magnitude when compared to an equivalent standard WiFi network. We propose and realize two strategies for implementing WiFresh: one at the MAC layer using hardware-level programming and another at the Application layer using Python.