At the forefront of cutting-edge technologies, this text provides a comprehensive treatment of a crucial network performance metric, ushering in new opportunities for rethinking the whole design of communication systems. Detailed exposition of the communication and network theoretic foundations of Age of Information (AoI) gives the reader a solid background, and discussion of the implications on signal processing and control theory shed light on the important potential of recent research. The text includes extensive real-world applications of this vital metric, including caching, the Internet of Things (IoT), and energy harvesting networks. The far-reaching applications of AoI include networked monitoring systems, cyber-physical systems such as the IoT, and information-oriented systems and data analytics applications ranging from the stock market to social networks. The future of this exciting subject in 5G communication systems and beyond make this a vital resource for graduate students, researchers and professionals.

‘As communication networks become increasingly integrated with sensing, computing, and storage platforms, the age of information is emerging as a versatile and tractable performance measure that captures the relevance of information for applications such as control and machine learning. Edited and contributed by leading experts in the field, this book is an excellent introduction to the topic and an essential reference for researchers in communications.’

Osvaldo Simeone - King’s College London

‘With the inception of 5G and its projected use in various real-time applications there has been an increased interest in the low-latency performance of wireless systems. … During the last decade the notion of Age of Information (AoI), information freshness, and its derivatives have sparked interest into analysis and design of communication systems with general timing requirements. This book provides a timely and fresh view on the area of AoI, featuring a highly competent Editorial team and excellent contributions from well-established researchers. Various important aspects are covered, ranging from analytical treatment and stochastic models for AoI, scheduling and transmission policies, interplay with machine learning techniques, as well as the very recent aspects of data economics and valuation. Beyond 5G and towards 6G systems, the relevance of timing performance in wireless communication … will only continue to grow, rendering this book into a valuable and reliable reference for researchers and engineers.’

Petar Popovski - Aalborg University, Denmark