So Timely, Yet So Stale: The Impact of Clock Drift in Real-Time Systems

In this paper, we address the problem of timely delivery of status update packets in a real-time communication system, where a transmitter sends status updates generated by a source to a receiver over an unreliable channel. The timestamps of the transmitted and received packets are measured using separate clocks located at the transmitter and receiver, respectively. To account for possible clock drift between these two clocks, we consider both the deterministic and probabilistic drift scenarios. We analyze the system’s performance regarding the Age of Information (AoI) and derive closed-form expressions for the distribution and the average AoI under both clock drift models. In addition, we explore the impact of key system parameters on the average AoI through analytical and numerical results.