AFRA: Age-Threshold Frame-Based Random Access for Timely Communication in Multi-Agent Systems
Abstract
Timely state updates are essential for coordination and monitoring in multi-agent systems, such as teams of mobile robots exchanging state information. When agents share a wireless channel, collisions and slow convergence of distributed access schemes can degrade information freshness over finite operating periods. This paper proposes age-threshold frame-based random access (AFRA), a distributed medium access control protocol for minimizing age of information (AoI). Once its age reaches a threshold, an agent starts a local frame with a mandatory transmission and, if unsuccessful, makes one further attempt at a uniformly selected remaining slot. Each attempt carries a freshly generated update. AFRA requires only local state and acknowledgment feedback, with shared slot boundaries but independently timed local frames. We prove almost-sure convergence from any legal initial state to collision-free periodic operation when the frame length L and age threshold T satisfy L≥ T>N≥2, where N is the number of agents. We also derive closed-form expressions for steady-state throughput, average AoI, and average peak AoI. Simulations demonstrate that AFRA combines rapid convergence at small age thresholds with lower window-averaged AoI than the existing age-aware random access schemes evaluated in this study.
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BibTeX
@misc{tan2026afra,
title = {{AFRA: Age-Threshold Frame-Based Random Access for Timely Communication in Multi-Agent Systems}},
author = {Jiedan Tan and Fang Liu},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.32785},
eprint = {2610.32785},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.32785},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - AFRA: Age-Threshold Frame-Based Random Access for Timely Communication in Multi-Agent Systems
AU - Jiedan Tan
AU - Fang Liu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/23
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.32785
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.32785
AB - Timely state updates are essential for coordination and monitoring in multi-agent systems, such as teams of mobile robots exchanging state information. When agents share a wireless channel, collisions and slow convergence of distributed access schemes can degrade information freshness over finite operating periods. This paper proposes age-threshold frame-based random access (AFRA), a distributed medium access control protocol for minimizing age of information (AoI). Once its age reaches a threshold, an agent starts a local frame with a mandatory transmission and, if unsuccessful, makes one further attempt at a uniformly selected remaining slot. Each attempt carries a freshly generated update. AFRA requires only local state and acknowledgment feedback, with shared slot boundaries but independently timed local frames. We prove almost-sure convergence from any legal initial state to collision-free periodic operation when the frame length L and age threshold T satisfy L≥ T>N≥2, where N is the number of agents. We also derive closed-form expressions for steady-state throughput, average AoI, and average peak AoI. Simulations demonstrate that AFRA combines rapid convergence at small age thresholds with lower window-averaged AoI than the existing age-aware random access schemes evaluated in this study.
ER -