Age of Information for Single Buffer Systems with Vacation Server

Abstract: In this research, we study the information freshness in M/G/1 queueing system with a single buffer and the server taking multiple vacations. This system has wide applications in communication systems. We aim to evaluate the information freshness in this system with both i.i.d. and non-i.i.d. vacations under three different scheduling policies, namely Conventional Buffer System (CBS), Buffer Relaxation System (BRS), and Conventional Buffer System with Preemption in Service (CBS-P). For the systems with i.i.d. vacations, we derive the closed-form expressions of information freshness metrics such as the expected Age of Information (AoI), the expected Peak Age of Information (PAoI), and the variance of peak age under each policy. For systems with non-i.i.d. vacations, we use the polling system as an example and provide the closed-form expression of its PAoI under each policy. We explore the conditions under which one of these policies has advantages over the others for each information freshness metric. We further perform numerical studies to validate our results and develop insights.