Age of information with packet management

We consider a system in which random status updates arrive at a source node, and should be transmitted through a wireless network to the intended destination node. The status updates are samples of a random process, transmitted as packets, containing the time stamp to identify the moment the sample was generated. The time it takes to successfully transmit a packet to the destination is modeled as an exponentially distributed service time. The status update age at the receiver is the time elapsed since the last received update was generated. In this paper, we analyze the age in the case that the source node has the capability to manage the arriving samples and decide which packets will be transmitted to the destination. In addition to the average age, we investigate the average of a new metric, called peak age, which provides information about the maximum value of the Age, achieved immediately before receiving an update.