Harsanyi's Equilibrium Selection for Distributed Sources Minimizing Age of Information

Abstract

Efforts to minimize Age of Information (AoI) in communication networks, particularly within energy-constrained devices in the Internet of Things (IoT), have prompted extensive research into resource management techniques. This study explores the optimization of AoI over a finite horizon in the context of resource-constrained IoT environments. We first frame the scenario of N distributed equivalent sources as a multi-agent coordination game, then we address the inefficiency of the resulting equilibria. We quantify it through the Price of Anarchy, of which we derive an algorithmic computation as well as numerical evaluations. We find it to be significant (higher than 1.5) already for few sources, and increasing in the number of players. Leveraging advanced theories of Harsanyi’s framework for equilibrium selection, we argue for the importance of preplay communication for AoI minimization, generally offering valuable insights for future research in IoT optimization and coordination.