Leveraging Random Access Techniques for Finite Horizon Uncoordinated Status Sensing

This study explores the minimization of age of information from multiple sources in a low-complexity scenario without centralized management. Multiple nodes transmit with-out coordination to a common sink with the objective of reporting status information about a monitored area (e.g., a forest, a greenhouse, or a field) for a finite horizon time window. We show how, although the problem is prone to high inefficiency in the solution, the exploitation of techniques inspired by random access at the multiplexing level of wireless networks, in particular introducing carrier sense over predefined operational points, enables considerable improvements. Further, we explore the sensitivity of these approaches to parameters such as the contention interval, the processing time, and the available offset over the schedule.