Goal-oriented Estimation of Multiple Markov Sources in Resource-constrained Systems

Abstract

This paper investigates goal-oriented communication for remote estimation of multiple Markov sources in resource-constrained networks. An agent decides the updating times of the sources and transmits the packet to a remote destination over an unreliable channel with delay. The destination is tasked with source reconstruction for actuation. We utilize the metric \textit{cost of actuation error} (CAE) to capture the state-dependent actuation costs. We aim for a sampling policy that minimizes the long-term average CAE subject to an average resource constraint. We formulate this problem as an average-cost constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP) and relax it into an unconstrained problem by utilizing \textit{Lyapunov drift} techniques. Then, we propose a low-complexity \textit{drift-plus-penalty} (DPP) policy for systems with known source/channel statistics and a Lyapunov optimization-based deep reinforcement learning (LO-DRL) policy for unknown environments. Our policies significantly reduce the number of uninformative transmissions by exploiting the timing of the important information.

arXiv commentAccepted to be presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC) 2024