As the most well-known application of the Internet of Things (IoT), remote monitoring is now pervasive. In these monitoring applications, information usually has a higher value when it is fresher. A new metric, termed the age of information (AoI), has recently been proposed to quantify the information freshness in various IoT applications. This paper concentrates on the design and analysis of age-oriented random access for massive IoT networks. Specifically, we devise a new stationary threshold-based age-dependent random access (ADRA) protocol, in which each IoT device accesses the channel with a certain probability only when its instantaneous AoI exceeds a predetermined threshold. We manage to evaluate the average AoI of the proposed ADRA protocol mathematically by decoupling the tangled AoI evolution of multiple IoT devices and modelling the decoupled AoI evolution of each device as a Discrete-Time Markov Chain. Simulation results validate our theoretical analysis and affirm the superior age performance of the proposed ADRA protocol over the state-of-the-art age-oriented random access schemes.

This letter analyzes and compares the performance of full-duplex relaying (FDR) and half-duplex relaying (HDR) for ultrareliable short-packet communications. Specifically, we derive both approximate and asymptotic closed-form expressions of the block error rate (BLER) for FDR and HDR using short packets with finite blocklength codes. We define and attain a closed-form expression of a critical BLER, which can be used to efficiently determine the optimal duplex mode for ultrareliable low latency communication scenarios. Our results unveil that FDR is more appealing to the system with relatively lower transmit power constraint, less stringent BLER requirement, and stronger loop interference suppression.

We consider a cognitive radio-based Internet-of-Things (CR-IoT) network consisting of one primary IoT (PIoT) system and one secondary IoT (SIoT) system. The IoT devices of both the PIoT and the SIoT respectively monitor one physical process and send randomly generated status updates to their associated access points (APs). The timeliness of the status updates is important as the systems are interested in the latest condition (e.g., temperature, speed and position) of the IoT device. In this context, two natural questions arise: (1) How to characterize the timeliness of the status updates in CR-IoT systems? (2) Which scheme, overlay or underlay, is better in terms of the timeliness of the status updates. To answer these two questions, we adopt a new performance metric, named the age of information (AoI). We analyze the average peak AoI of the PIoT and the SIoT for overlay and underlay schemes, respectively. Simple asymptotic expressions of the average peak AoI are also derived when the PIoT operates at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Based on the asymptotic expressions, we characterize a critical generation rate of the PIoT system, which can determine the superiority of overlay and underlay schemes in terms of the average peak AoI of the SIoT. Numerical results validate the theoretical analysis and uncover that the overlay and underlay schemes can outperform each other in terms of the average peak AoI of the SIoT for different system setups.

This paper investigates a wireless-powered cooperative network (WPCN) consisting of one source-destination pair and multiple decode-and-forward (DF) relays. We develop an energy threshold based multi-relay selection (ETMRS) scheme for the considered WPCN. The proposed ETMRS scheme can be implemented in a fully distributed manner as the relays only need local information to switch between energy harvesting and information forwarding modes. By modeling the charging/discharging behaviours of the finite-capacity battery at each relay as a finite-state Markov Chain (MC), we derive an analytical expression for the system outage probability of the proposed ETMRS scheme over mixed Nakagami-m and Rayleigh fading channels. Based on the derived expression, the optimal energy thresholds for all the relays corresponding to the minimum system outage probability can be obtained via an exhaustive search. However, this approach becomes computationally prohibitive when the number of relays and the associated number of battery energy levels is large. To resolve this issue, we propose a heuristic approach to optimize the energy threshold for each relay. To gain some useful insights for practical relay design, we also derive the upper bound for system outage probability corresponding to the case that all relays are equipped with infinite-capacity batteries. Numerical results validate our theoretical analysis. It is shown that the proposed heuristic approach can achieve a near-optimal system performance and our ETMRS scheme outperforms the existing single-relay selection scheme and common energy threshold scheme.

This paper considers a cognitive radio-based IoT monitoring system, consisting of an IoT device that aims to update its measurement to a destination using cognitive radio technique. Specifically, the IoT device as a secondary user (SIoT), seeks and exploits the spectrum opportunities of the licensed band vacated by its primary user (PU) to deliver status updates without causing visible effects to the licensed operation. In this context, the SIoT should carefully make use of the licensed band and schedule when to transmit to maintain the timeliness of the status update. The timeliness of the status update characterizes how the destination knows the latest information of the SIoT. We adopt a recent metric, Age of Information (AoI), to characterize the timeliness of the status update of the SIoT. We aim to minimize the long-term average AoI of the SIoT while satisfying the collision constraint imposed by the PU by formulating a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) problem. We first prove the existence of optimal stationary policy of the CMDP problem. The optimal stationary policy (termed age-optimal policy) is shown to be a randomized simple policy that randomizes between two deterministic policies with a fixed probability. We prove that the two deterministic policies have a threshold structure and further derive the closed-form expression of average AoI and collision probability for the deterministic threshold-structured policy by conducting Markov Chain analysis. The analytical expression offers an efficient way to calculate the threshold and randomization probability to form the age-optimal policy. For comparison, we also consider the throughput maximization policy (termed throughput-optimal policy) and analyze the average AoI performance under the throughput-optimal policy in the considered system. Numerical simulations show the superiority of the derived age-optimal policy over the throughput-optimal policy. We also unveil the impacts of various system parameters on the corresponding optimal policy and the resultant average AoI.