Adaptive Threshold Based Joint Age-Space Congestion Control for Steady Age Performance With Desirable Information Flow

This paper introduces an Adaptive Threshold Policy (ATP) and its modified version, ATP+, designed for congestion control and maintaining information freshness within communication networks. The arrival of incoming updates is random, making it challenging to create a threshold-based algorithm that minimizes the age of the updates in the buffer while preventing resource under-utilization. We have proposed an exponentially decaying flexible threshold policy based on buffer occupancy, ensuring the freshness of information through the selective rejection of older updates in the buffer to enhance resource utilization. We highlight the favorable arrival and departure probabilities necessary for the ATP+ algorithm to function optimally within a desired buffer occupancy range. Some parameters of the algorithm are adjusted based on knowledge of the incoming age profile. We also discuss the potential failures of the algorithm when there is a mismatch between assumptions and actual conditions, as well as measures to detect such events and respond appropriately.