Основные понятия
The server aims to maximize its profit by increasing subscriptions from users and minimizing event sampling frequency, while users seek to maintain their expected version ages below a threshold by either relying on gossip from neighbors or directly subscribing to the server.
Аннотация
The paper considers a communication system where a group of users, interconnected in a bidirectional gossip network, wish to track a time-varying source (e.g., updates on an event) in real-time. The users want to maintain their expected version ages below a threshold and can either rely on gossip from their neighbors or directly subscribe to a server publishing about the event.
The server's goal is to maximize its profit by increasing subscriptions from users and minimizing event sampling frequency to reduce costs. This leads to a Stackelberg game between the server and the users, where the server is the leader deciding its sampling frequency and the users are the followers deciding their subscription strategies.
The authors investigate equilibrium strategies for low-connectivity (bidirectional line) and high-connectivity (fully-connected) network topologies. For the bidirectional line network, multiple Stackelberg equilibrium solutions exist, with higher plausible periodicity of subscribers under frequent server sampling. In contrast, the fully-connected network gives a single equilibrium solution and fewer subscribers, as the deep network connectivity disincentivizes users from subscribing.
The key insights are:
- In the bidirectional line network, the highest age in the non-subscribers is at the midpoint between subscribers, and the expected age of a set of nodes is independent of the frequency of subscribers.
- For the fully-connected network, the expected age of a non-subscribing user decreases as the number of subscribers increases, and there exists a unique number of subscribers that makes all users age-compatible.
- The server's optimal strategy balances the tradeoff between increasing subscriptions and minimizing sampling costs, leading to different equilibrium solutions for the two network topologies.
Статистика
The expected age at the server is given by xR = peβ - 1.
The expected age at a subscribing user is given by xS = peβ - 1 + 1.
Цитаты
"The server wishes to maximize its profit by increasing subscriptions from users and minimizing event sampling frequency to reduce costs."
"This leads to a Stackelberg game between the server and the users where the sender is the leader deciding its sampling frequency and the users are the followers deciding their subscription strategies."