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

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2017-12
Main Authors: Yates, Roy D, Kaul, Sanjit K
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Hybrid systems
Markov analysis
Markov chains
Queues
Queuing theory
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary: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.
ISSN:2331-8422