Benefits of Coding on Age of Information in Broadcast Networks

Age of Information (AoI) is studied in two-user broadcast networks with feedback, and lower and upper bounds are derived on the expected weighted sum AoI of the users. In particular, a class of simple coding actions is considered and within this class, randomized and deterministic policies are devised. Explicit conditions are found for symmetric dependent channels under which coded randomized policies strictly outperform the corresponding uncoded policies. Similar behavior is numerically shown for deterministic policies.