On the Role of Age and Semantics of Information in Remote Estimation of Markov Sources

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Main Authors: Luo, Jiping, Pappas, Nikolaos
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Luo, Jiping
Pappas, Nikolaos
author_facet Luo, Jiping
Pappas, Nikolaos
contents This paper studies semantics-aware remote estimation of Markov sources. We leverage two complementary information attributes: the urgency of lasting impact, which quantifies the significance of consecutive estimation error at the transmitter, and the age of information (AoI), which captures the predictability of outdated information at the receiver. The objective is to minimize the long-run average lasting impact subject to a transmission frequency constraint. The problem is formulated as a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) with potentially unbounded costs. We show the existence of an optimal simple mixture policy, which randomizes between two neighboring switching policies at a common regeneration state. A closed-form expression for the optimal mixture coefficient is derived. Each switching policy triggers transmission only when the error holding time exceeds a threshold that depends on both the instantaneous estimation error and the AoI. We further derive sufficient conditions under which the thresholds are independent of the instantaneous error and the AoI. Finally, we propose a structure-aware algorithm, Insec-SPI, that computes the optimal policy with reduced computation overhead. Numerical results demonstrate that incorporating both the age and semantics of information significantly improves estimation performance compared to using either attribute alone.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_18514
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the Role of Age and Semantics of Information in Remote Estimation of Markov Sources
Luo, Jiping
Pappas, Nikolaos
Information Theory
Networking and Internet Architecture
Systems and Control
This paper studies semantics-aware remote estimation of Markov sources. We leverage two complementary information attributes: the urgency of lasting impact, which quantifies the significance of consecutive estimation error at the transmitter, and the age of information (AoI), which captures the predictability of outdated information at the receiver. The objective is to minimize the long-run average lasting impact subject to a transmission frequency constraint. The problem is formulated as a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) with potentially unbounded costs. We show the existence of an optimal simple mixture policy, which randomizes between two neighboring switching policies at a common regeneration state. A closed-form expression for the optimal mixture coefficient is derived. Each switching policy triggers transmission only when the error holding time exceeds a threshold that depends on both the instantaneous estimation error and the AoI. We further derive sufficient conditions under which the thresholds are independent of the instantaneous error and the AoI. Finally, we propose a structure-aware algorithm, Insec-SPI, that computes the optimal policy with reduced computation overhead. Numerical results demonstrate that incorporating both the age and semantics of information significantly improves estimation performance compared to using either attribute alone.
title On the Role of Age and Semantics of Information in Remote Estimation of Markov Sources
topic Information Theory
Networking and Internet Architecture
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18514