Age of Information From Two Strategic Sources Analyzed via Game Theory

This paper investigates a system with two strategic sources, both being able to update a given information process at the receiver's end, but doing so independently and unbeknownst to each other, and also being aware that they incur a local cost for each update. Thus, the sources should independently make a periodic decision on whether to update or not, weighing the global benefit of decreasing the receiver's age of information versus their individual cost paid. This scenario is analyzed from a game theoretic perspective, showing the existence of three Nash equilibria, with different overall efficiencies. Interestingly, for a wide range of update costs, the efficient equilibria are the ones with most unbalance between the updates from either source. In other words, making use of both sources does not result in an efficient equilibrium. This further enables the evaluation of the Price of Anarchy, quantifying the worst-case scenario inefficiency of selfish management of the sources, under different values of the updating cost.