Moment Generating Function of Age of Information in Multi-Source M/G/1/1 Queueing Systems

Abstract: We consider a multi-source status update system, where each source generates status update packets according to a Poisson process which are then served according to a generally distributed service time. For this multi-source M/G/1/1 queueing model, we introduce a source-aware preemptive packet management policy and derive the moment generating functions (MGFs) of the age of information (AoI) and peak AoI of each source. According to the policy, an arriving fresh packet preempts the possible packet of the same source in the system. Furthermore, we derive the MGFs of the AoI and peak AoI for the source-agnostic preemptive and non-preemptive policy, for which only the average AoI and peak AoI have been derived earlier. Finally, we use the MGFs to derive the average AoI and peak AoI in a two-source M/G/1/1 queueing model under each policy. Numerical results show the effect of the service time distribution parameters on the average AoI: for a given service rate, when the tail of the service time distribution is sufficiently heavy, the source-agnostic preemptive policy is the best policy, whereas for a sufficiently light tailed distribution, the non-preemptive policy is the best policy. The results also highlight the importance of higher moments of the AoI.