We are pleased to announce that Prof. Elif Uysal will give an invited talk at MOSC 2026 titled “On Sampling, Routing, and Preemption to Control Age of Information in Networks.”
Abstract
In goal-oriented networking, the usefulness of delivered information is shaped by an interplay among sampling decisions, delay uncertainty, transmission opportunities, and service dynamics. In this perspective, value of the next delivered update depends on when it was generated, and how effectively it supports the relevant task at the final destination; eg, inference, monitoring, or control. Age of Information (AoI) has provided a powerful metric for studying this interplay, revealing behaviors that often run counter to conventional intuition.
This talk presents several recent results that add further unconventional perspectives. First, in network connections with heterogeneous paths, route selection can reshape freshness-optimal sampling behavior. Even paths with larger mean delay or variance may contribute positively to minimization of age based penalty. Second, in systems with random and heavy-tailed service times, proactive preemption is far more than a queueing refinement: it becomes a powerful control lever for freshness, enabling the system to cut off unfavorable delay realizations, tame heavy-tailed service uncertainty, and substantially outperform classical non-preemptive age-optimal policies.
Overall, the talk shows that random delay need not be a hindrance to freshness in networks: with the right design, e.g. routing and preemption, it can even be turned into the system’s advantage.