Timely Updates With Priorities: Lexicographic Age Optimality

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a scheduling problem, in which several streams of status update packets with different priority levels are sent through a shared channel to their destinations. We introduce a notion of <i>lexicographic age optimality</i>, or simply <i>lex-age-optimality</i>, to evaluate the performance of multi-class status update policies. In particular, a lex-age-optimal scheduling policy first minimizes the Age of Information (AoI) metrics for high-priority streams, and then, within the set of optimal policies for high-priority streams, achieves the minimum AoI metrics for low-priority streams. We propose a new scheduling policy named Preemptive Priority, Maximum Age First, Last-Generated, First-Served (PP-MAF-LGFS), and prove that the PP-MAF-LGFS scheduling policy is lex-age-optimal. This result holds (i) for minimizing any time-dependent, symmetric, and non-decreasing age penalty function; (ii) for minimizing any non-decreasing functional of the stochastic process formed by the age penalty function; and (iii) for the cases where different priority classes have distinct arrival traffic patterns, age penalty functions, and age penalty functionals. For example, the PP-MAF-LGFS scheduling policy is lex-age-optimal for minimizing the probability of age violation of a high-priority stream and the time-average age of a low-priority stream. Numerical results are provided to illustrate our theoretical findings.