We introduce minislotted threshold ALOHA (MiSTA), a slotted ALOHA modification designed to minimize the network-wide time average Age of Information (AoI). In MiSTA, sources whose ages are below a certain threshold stay silent. A node with the age above the threshold becomes active in the next time frame with a certain probability. The active node first transmits a short control sequence in a minislot ahead of actual data transmission, and if collision is sensed, it backs off with a certain probability. We derive the steady-state distribution of the number of active sources and analyze its limiting behavior. We show that MiSTA probabilistically converges to a enquote thinned slotted ALOHA, where the number of active users at steady state adjusts to optimize age. With an optimal selection of parameters, MiSTA achieves an AoI scaling with the number of sources, nn , as 0.9641n0.9641n , which is an improvement over the threshold ALOHA policy proposed earlier (for which the lowest possible scaling is 1.4169n1.4169n ). While achieving this reduction in age, MiSTA also increases the theoretically achievable throughput to approximately 53%, from the 37% achievable by threshold ALOHA and regular slotted ALOHA.

中文翻译：

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MiSTA：年龄优化的时隙 ALOHA 协议


我们引入了微时隙阈值 ALOHA (MiSTA)，这是一种时隙 ALOHA 修改，旨在最小化网络范围内的时间平均信息年龄 (AoI)。在 MiSTA 中，年龄低于特定阈值的消息来源保持沉默。年龄高于阈值的节点以一定的概率在下一个时间范围内变得活跃。主动节点首先在实际数据传输之前的微时隙中发送短控制序列，并且如果感测到冲突，则以一定概率后退。我们推导出活动源数量的稳态分布并分析其限制行为。我们证明 MiSTA 在概率上收敛于引用细化时隙 ALOHA，其中稳定状态下的活跃用户数量会进行调整以优化年龄。通过优化参数选择，MiSTA 实现了 AoI 缩放，源数量 nn 为 0.9641n0.9641n ，这比之前提出的阈值 ALOHA 策略有所改进（其最低可能缩放为 1.4169n1.4169n ） 。在实现寿命缩短的同时，MiSTA 还将理论上可实现的吞吐量从阈值 ALOHA 和常规时隙 ALOHA 可实现的 37% 提高到约 53%。