On the AoI-Aware Status Update in Buffer-Aided Wireless-Powered Internet of Things Network

In this article, we focus on buffer-aided wireless-powered Internet of Things (IoTs) comprising of one wireless access point (AP) and multiple devices, where the AP provides energy to all devices via downlink radio frequency (RF) energy beams. All devices utilize the harvested energy to transmit their data to the AP in a time-division multiple access (TDMA) manner. Every device is assumed to be provisioned with energy storage and data buffer to store the collected energy from the AP and its data, respectively. The problem of minimizing the long-term average Age of Information (AoI) of the system is formulated in this article. By solving the problem under the Lyapunov optimization framework, the AoI-aware adaptive transmission scheme is obtained, in which downlink RF energy beamforming, downlink energy transfer and uplink access, as well as transmit power and transmission rate by every device, will be jointly adjusted in order to minimize average weighted AoI according to the underlying channel state information (CSI), the buffer state information (BSI), the energy-consumption status information (ESI) of all terminals, as well as the AoI status information (ASI). Our analysis unveils that, the status update rate at devices has a significant impact on the achievable AoI performance, and the minimum average weighted AoI can only be realized at a reasonable status update rate, which is neither too high nor too low. Moreover, flexible AoI-aware scheme can be realized by adjusting either the AoI priority level or the AoI weighting coefficient.