# Whittle Index Based Scheduling Policy for Minimizing the Cost of Age of Information

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.05869 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.05869/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 13 Sep 2021.

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

- [Age-of-information minimization under energy harvesting and non-stationary environment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04916/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We design a new scheduling policy to minimize the general non-decreasing cost function of age of information (AoI) in a multiuser system. In this system, the base station stochastically generates time-sensitive packets and transmits them to corresponding user equipments via an unreliable channel. We first formulate the transmission scheduling problem as an average cost constrained Markov decision process problem. Through introducing the service charge, we derive the closed-form expression for the Whittle index, based on which we design the scheduling policy. Using numerical results, we demonstrate the performance gain of our designed scheduling policy compared to the existing policies, such as the optimal policy, the on-demand Whittle index policy, and the age greedy policy.