Freshness of status update packets is essential for enabling a wide range of applications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Accordingly, we consider a WSN where sensors communicate status updates to a destination by contending for the channel access based on a carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) method. We analyze the worst case average age of information (AoI) and average peak AoI from the view of one sensor in a system where all the other sensors have a saturated queue. Numerical results illustrate the importance of optimizing the contention window size and the packet arrival rate to maximize the information freshness.
Funding Agencies|Infotech Oulu; Academy of FinlandAcademy of Finland [323698, 318927]; Finnish Foundation for Technology Promotion; European Unions Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme through the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant (COMPRESS NETS)European Union (EU) [793402]