On the Age of Information in Single-Server Queues with Aged Updates

Abstract: The Age of Information (AoI) is a performance metric that quantifies the freshness of data in systems where timely updates are critical. Most state-of-the-art methods typically assume that packets enter the monitored system with zero age, neglecting situations, such as those prevalent in multi-hop networks or distributed sensing, where packets experience prior delays. In this paper, the AoI is investigated when packets have a non-zero initial age. We derive an expression for the average AoI in this setting, showing that it equals the standard AoI plus a correction term involving the correlation between packet age and inter-departure times. When these variables are independent, the expression simplifies to an additive correction equal to the mean initial age. In cases where the dependency structure is unknown, we also establish lower and upper bounds for the correction term. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach across various queueing scenarios, such as forwarding, tandem, and retrial queues. Additionally, we explore the accuracy of the derived bounds on a tandem composed of several queues, a model that has not yet been analytically solved from an age perspective.