Discrete Age of Information for Bufferless System With Multiple Prioritized Sources

The continuous development of modern communication and computation gives rise to a large number of applications based on Internet of Things (IoT) technology. Considering the diverse uses and various service requirements, the information freshness of IoT data, which is measured by age of information (AoI), is crucial for latency-sensitive IoT applications, such as industrial automation and intelligent transportation, because outdated information can lead to delayed and inaccurate response. Under the assumptions of bufferless and no service preemption, in this paper we consider the scenario where multiple sources transmit packets through a common server and analyze the discrete AoI corresponding to each source. To facilitate the description of random AoI evolutions, we assign priorities to the sources and assume that when multiple sources generate new packets in one time slot, the packet with the highest priority is selected and served. We obtain the explicit expression of average AoI and calculate the general formula in several cases, where the relationships between average AoI and other system parameters are investigated detailly. Also, under a constraint imposed on average service time over all the sources, we consider minimizing average AoI of one source by finding the optimal service rates for the packet from each source. In particular, for minimizing one source's average AoI in two-source systems, the pair of optimal service rates are determined completely. The results show that if the probability that one source's packet obtains the service is large enough, then to minimize average AoI of this source, maximizing the service rate for its own packets is not the optimal. Some discussions on source priorities are given and finally we provide the numerical simulations for the obtained results.