Abstract : We consider a system consisting of N source nodes communicatingwith a common receiver. Each source node has a bufferof infinite capacity to store incoming bursty traffic in the form ofstatus updates transmitted in packets, which should maintain thestatus information at the receiver fresh. Packets waiting for transmissioncan be discarded to avoid wasting network resources forthe transmission of stale information. We investigate the age of information(AoI) performance of the system under scheduled andrandom access. Moreover, we present analysis of the AoI withand without packet management at the transmission queue of thesource nodes, where as packet management we consider the capabilityto replace unserved packets at the queue whenever newerones arrive. Finally, we provide simulation results that illustratethe impact of the network operating parameters on the age performanceof the different access protocols.
Index terms : Age of information, multiple-access channels, packet management, performance analysis, queueing theory, real time systems.