"If you are exchanging congestion information, you would want that information to be as fresh as possible," said MIT's Eytan Modiano in a statement. "If it's dated, you might make the wrong decision. That's why the age of information is important."

In essence, the researchers found a way to calculate an "index" for each node on a given wireless network, like a single drone in a fleet of them sending data to a central server. The index tracks the freshness of the transmitted data, the reliability of the channel it's sending information across and the priority of the specific node. A higher index value means that node will have priority when transmitting data; index values can change dynamically or be weighted for specific nodes, like an expensive or faster drone. The team hopes to test its algorithm on radio networks and to develop algorithms for more complicated networks.