Age of Information with Finite Horizon and Partial Updates

TL;DR

This paper studies how finite update requests and partial updates affect the age of information in resource-limited systems, showing fixed policies are optimal and partial updates incur age penalties.

Contribution

It introduces a model analyzing finite horizon and partial updates, demonstrating optimal fixed request policies and the impact of compression on age penalty.

Findings

Fixed update request policies minimize polynomial age penalties.

Partial updates incur age penalties independent of compression.

Finite horizons outperform infinite horizons in second order age statistics.

Abstract

A resource-constrained system monitors a source of information by requesting a finite number of updates subject to random transmission delays. An a priori fixed update request policy is shown to minimize a polynomial penalty function of the age of information over arbitrary time horizons. Partial updates, compressed updates with reduced transmission and information content, in the presented model are shown to incur an age penalty independent of the compression. Finite horizons are shown to have better performance in terms of second order statistic relative to infinite horizons.