Optimal Mechanism Design for Fresh Data Acquisition

Meng Zhang; Ahmed Arafa; Ermin Wei; Randall A. Berry

doi:10.1109/ISIT45174.2021.9517951

Optimal Mechanism Design for Fresh Data Acquisition

Meng Zhang, Ahmed Arafa, Ermin Wei, Randall A. Berry

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract

In this paper, we study a fresh data acquisition problem to acquire fresh data and optimize the age-related performance when strategic data sources have private market information. We consider an information update system in which a destination acquires, and pays for, fresh data updates from a source. The destination incurs an age-related cost, modeled as a general increasing function of the age-of-information (AoI). The source is strategic and incurs a sampling cost, which is its private information and may not be truthfully reported to the destination. To this end, we design an optimal (economic) mechanism for timely information acquisition by generalizing Myerson's seminal work. The goal is to minimize the sum of the destination's age-related cost and its payment to the source, while ensuring that the source truthfully reports its private information and will voluntarily participate in the mechanism. Our results show that, under some distributions of the source's cost, our proposed optimal mechanism can lead to an unbounded benefit, compared against a benchmark that naively trusts the source's report and thus incentivizes its maximal over-reporting.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	2021 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2021 - Proceedings
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages	3367-3372
Number of pages	6
ISBN (Electronic)	9781538682098
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/ISIT45174.2021.9517951
State	Published - Jul 12 2021
Event	2021 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2021 - Virtual, Melbourne, Australia Duration: Jul 12 2021 → Jul 20 2021

Publication series

Name	IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory - Proceedings
Volume	2021-July
ISSN (Print)	2157-8095

Conference

Conference	2021 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2021
Country/Territory	Australia
City	Virtual, Melbourne
Period	7/12/21 → 7/20/21

Funding

This work was supported in part by NSF grants CNS-1908807, AST-2037838, and ECCS-2030251.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Theoretical Computer Science
Information Systems
Modeling and Simulation
Applied Mathematics

Access to Document

10.1109/ISIT45174.2021.9517951

Cite this

Zhang, M., Arafa, A., Wei, E., & Berry, R. A. (2021). Optimal Mechanism Design for Fresh Data Acquisition. In 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2021 - Proceedings (pp. 3367-3372). (IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory - Proceedings; Vol. 2021-July). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISIT45174.2021.9517951

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abstract = "In this paper, we study a fresh data acquisition problem to acquire fresh data and optimize the age-related performance when strategic data sources have private market information. We consider an information update system in which a destination acquires, and pays for, fresh data updates from a source. The destination incurs an age-related cost, modeled as a general increasing function of the age-of-information (AoI). The source is strategic and incurs a sampling cost, which is its private information and may not be truthfully reported to the destination. To this end, we design an optimal (economic) mechanism for timely information acquisition by generalizing Myerson's seminal work. The goal is to minimize the sum of the destination's age-related cost and its payment to the source, while ensuring that the source truthfully reports its private information and will voluntarily participate in the mechanism. Our results show that, under some distributions of the source's cost, our proposed optimal mechanism can lead to an unbounded benefit, compared against a benchmark that naively trusts the source's report and thus incentivizes its maximal over-reporting.",

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Zhang, M, Arafa, A, Wei, E & Berry, RA 2021, Optimal Mechanism Design for Fresh Data Acquisition. in 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2021 - Proceedings. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory - Proceedings, vol. 2021-July, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., pp. 3367-3372, 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2021, Virtual, Melbourne, Australia, 7/12/21. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISIT45174.2021.9517951

Optimal Mechanism Design for Fresh Data Acquisition. / Zhang, Meng; Arafa, Ahmed; Wei, Ermin et al.
2021 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2021 - Proceedings. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2021. p. 3367-3372 (IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory - Proceedings; Vol. 2021-July).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

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Optimal Mechanism Design for Fresh Data Acquisition

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