Optimizing Age of Information for Uplink Cellular Internet of Things With Random Access

In the Cellular Internet of Things (CIoT), it is crucial to ensure the information freshness for status update applications. Considering the centralized access methods could cause large access delay and hamper timely status updates, this article exploits the random access method and studies decentralized status update schemes to minimize the average Age of Information (AoI) for CIoT. However, due to the noncooperation among machine type communication devices (MTCDs) in random access, packet collisions are inevitable, which makes it tricky to improve the AoI performance. In this regard, we design novel age-based status update schemes to control the transmission behavior of MTCDs, where the AoI at the MTCDs and the base station (BS) is used. We first model the AoI minimization problem as a Markov decision process. Then, through variable substitution and linear programming, we get a slightly more computationally complex status update scheme, where the dual threshold structure of the scheme is proved theoretically. To facilitate system design and reduce computational complexity, we further design a low-complexity scheme, where the age thresholds at both the MTCDs and BS are optimized. Simulation results verify that the proposed schemes significantly outperform the common access scheme.

I. Introduction

With the continuous development of sensor technology, Cellular Internet of Things (CIoT) has attracted wide attention from academia and industry due to its various advantages, such as high connectivity, low-power consumption, and wide coverage [1]. In recent years, the number of machine type communication devices (MTCDs) in CIoT has exploded. More and more MTCDs are connected to the cellular network, driving the development of emerging applications [2].