On the Age of Status Updates in Unreliable Multi-Source M/G/1 Queueing Systems

TL;DR

This paper derives a closed-form expression for the average age of information in a multi-source M/G/1 queue with server failures, providing insights into system performance under various conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analytical approach to compute the average AoI in systems with general service and repair time distributions, including server failures.

Findings

Closed-form expression for average AoI derived

Validation through numerical simulations under different parameters

Effective packet serving policy demonstrated

Abstract

The timeliness of status message delivery in communications networks is subjective to time-varying wireless channel transmissions. In this paper, we investigate the age of information (AoI) of each source in a multi-source M/G/1 queueing update system with active server failures. In particular, we adopt the method of supplementary variables to derive a closed-form expression for the average AoI in terms of system parameters, where the server repair time follows a general distribution and the service time of packets generated by independent sources is a general random variable. Numerical results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed packet serving policy under different parametric settings.