ACP: An End-to-End Transport Protocol for Delivering Fresh Updates in the Internet-of-Things

Abstract: The next generation of networks must support billions of connected devices in the Internet-of-Things (IoT). To support IoT applications, sources sense and send their measurement updates over the Internet to a monitor (control station) for real-time monitoring and actuation. Ideally, these updates would be delivered at a high rate, only constrained by the sensing rate supported by the sources. However, given network constraints, such a rate may lead to delays in delivery of updates at the monitor that make the freshest update at the monitor unacceptably old for the application. We propose a novel transport layer protocol, namely the Age Control Protocol (ACP), that enables timely delivery of such updates to monitors, in a network-transparent manner. ACP allows the source to adapt its rate of updates to dynamic network conditions such that the average age of the sensed information at the monitor is minimized. We detail the protocol and the proposed control algorithm. We demonstrate its efficacy using extensive simulations and real-world experiments, which have a source send its updates over the Internet to a monitor on another continent.