No Arabic abstract
This paper investigates information freshness of multichannel access in information update systems. Age of information (AoI) is a fundamentally important metric to characterize information freshness, defined as the time elapsed since the generation of the last successfully received update. When multiple devices share the same wireless channel to send updates to a common receiver, an interesting question is whether dividing the whole channel into several subchannels will lead to better AoI performance. Given the same frequency band, dividing it into different numbers of subchannels lead to different transmission times and packet error rates (PER) of short update packets, thus affecting information freshness. We focus on a multichannel access system where different devices take turns to transmit with a cyclic schedule repeated over time. We first derive the average AoI by estimating the PERs of short packets. Then we examine bounded AoI, for which the instantaneous AoI is required to be below a threshold a large percentage of the time. Simulation results indicate that multichannel access can provide low average AoI and uniform bounded AoI simultaneously across different received powers. Overall, our investigations provide insights into practical designs of multichannel access systems with AoI requirements.
We consider a star-topology wireless network for status update where a central node collects status data from a large number of distributed machine-type terminals that share a wireless medium. The Age of Information (AoI) minimization scheduling problem is formulated by the restless multi-armed bandit. A widely-proven near-optimal solution, i.e., the Whittles index, is derived in closed-form and the corresponding indexability is established. The index is then generalized to incorporate stochastic, periodic packet arrivals and unreliable channels. Inspired by the index scheduling policies which achieve near-optimal AoI but require heavy signaling overhead, a contention-based random access scheme, namely Index-Prioritized Random Access (IPRA), is further proposed. Based on IPRA, terminals that are not urgent to update, indicated by their indices, are barred access to the wireless medium, thus improving the access timeliness. A computer-based simulation shows that IPRAs performance is close to the optimal AoI in this setting and outperforms standard random access schemes. Also, for applications with hard AoI deadlines, we provide reliable deadline guarantee analysis. Closed-form achievable AoI stationary distributions under Bernoulli packet arrivals are derived such that AoI deadline with high reliability can be ensured by calculating the maximum number of supportable terminals and allocating system resources proportionally.
In this paper, we aim to establish the connection between Age of Information (AoI) in network theory, information uncertainty in information theory, and detection delay in time series analysis. We consider a dynamic system whose state changes at discrete time points, and a state change wont be detected until an update generated after the change point is delivered to the destination for the first time. We introduce an information theoretic metric to measure the information freshness at the destination, and name it as generalized Age of Information (GAoI). We show that under any state-independent online updating policy, if the underlying state of the system evolves according to a stationary Markov chain, the GAoI is proportional to the AoI. Besides, the accumulative GAoI and AoI are proportional to the expected accumulative detection delay of all changes points over a period of time. Thus, any (G)AoI-optimal state-independent updating policy equivalently minimizes the corresponding expected change point detection delay, which validates the fundamental role of (G)AoI in real-time status monitoring. Besides, we also investigate a Bayesian change point detection scenario where the underlying state evolution is not stationary. Although AoI is no longer related to detection delay explicitly, we show that the accumulative GAoI is still an affine function of the expected detection delay, which indicates the versatility of GAoI in capturing information freshness in dynamic systems.
This paper studies information freshness in information update systems operated with TDMA and FDMA. Information freshness is characterized by a recently introduced metric, age of information (AoI), defined as the time elapsed since the generation of the last successfully received update. In an update system with multiple users sharing the same wireless channel to send updates to a common receiver, how to divide the channel among users affects information freshness. We investigate the AoI performances of two fundamental multiple access schemes, TDMA and FDMA. We first derive the time-averaged AoI by estimating the packet error rate of short update packets based on Gallagers random coding bound. For time-critical systems, we further define a new AoI metric, termed bounded AoI, which corresponds to an AoI threshold for the instantaneous AoI. Specifically, the instantaneous AoI is below the bounded AoI a large percentage of the time. We give a theoretical upper bound for bounded AoI. Our simulation results are consistent with our theoretical analysis. Although TDMA outperforms FDMA in terms of average AoI, FDMA is more robust against varying channel conditions since it gives a more stable bounded AoI across different received powers. Overall, our findings give insight to the design of practical multiple access systems with AoI requirements.
Current network access infrastructures are characterized by heterogeneity, low latency, high throughput, and high computational capability, enabling massive concurrent connections and various services. Unfortunately, this design does not pay significant attention to mobile services in underserved areas. In this context, the use of aerial radio access networks (ARANs) is a promising strategy to complement existing terrestrial communication systems. Involving airborne components such as unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, and satellites, ARANs can quickly establish a flexible access infrastructure on demand. ARANs are expected to support the development of seamless mobile communication systems toward a comprehensive sixth-generation (6G) global access infrastructure. This paper provides an overview of recent studies regarding ARANs in the literature. First, we investigate related work to identify areas for further exploration in terms of recent knowledge advancements and analyses. Second, we define the scope and methodology of this study. Then, we describe ARAN architecture and its fundamental features for the development of 6G networks. In particular, we analyze the system model from several perspectives, including transmission propagation, energy consumption, communication latency, and network mobility. Furthermore, we introduce technologies that enable the success of ARAN implementations in terms of energy replenishment, operational management, and data delivery. Subsequently, we discuss application scenarios envisioned for these technologies. Finally, we highlight ongoing research efforts and trends toward 6G ARANs.
Network softwarization has revolutionized the architecture of cellular wireless networks. State-of-the-art container based virtual radio access networks (vRAN) provide enormous flexibility and reduced life cycle management costs, but they also come with prohibitive energy consumption. We argue that for future AI-native wireless networks to be flexible and energy efficient, there is a need for a new abstraction in network softwarization that caters for neural network type of workloads and allows a large degree of service composability. In this paper we present the NeuroRAN architecture, which leverages stateful function as a user facing execution model, and is complemented with virtualized resources and decentralized resource management. We show that neural network based implementations of common transceiver functional blocks fit the proposed architecture, and we discuss key research challenges related to compilation and code generation, resource management, reliability and security.