# Age-of-Information with Information Source Diversity in an Energy Harvesting System

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.11135 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11135/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 23 Apr 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Learning to Minimize Age of Information over an Unreliable Channel with Energy Harvesting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.16037/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Age of information (AoI) is one of the key performance metrics for Internet of things (IoT) systems. Timely status updates are essential for many IoT applications; however, they are subject to strict constraints related on the available energy and unreliability of underlying information sources. Hence, the scheduling of status updates must be carefully planned to preserve energy, but at the same time, it may happen that when a status update is needed, there is no reliable up-to-date information content to refresh. As a solution to overcome these unpredictabilities, one can employ multiple sources that track the same signal of interest, but with different energy costs and reliabilities, which we call information source diversity. We consider an energy-harvesting monitoring node equipped with a finite-size battery and collecting status updates from multiple heterogeneous information sources. We investigate the policies that minimize the average AoI, and evaluate the role of information source diversity on the system performance. To do so, we formulate the problem as a Markov decision process (MDP). The optimal policy represents the scheduling of actions, such as an update from one of the sources or remaining idle, based on the current energy level and the AoI at the monitoring node. We analyze the structure of the optimal solution for different cost/AoI distribution combinations, and compare the performance of the optimal policy with an aggressive strategy that transmits whenever possible.