CRII: CIF: Models, Theories and Algorithms for Timeliness Optimization in Information-update Systems

过去二十年见证了网络资源分配的理论基础和控制机制的发展取得了重大进展。这些新发展的理论和机制在吞吐量和延迟方面显着提高了网络性能。然而，对于需要实时信息更新的网络系统来说，优化吞吐量和延迟是不够的。需要大力扩展最先进的理论基础，以将信息的及时性整合到网络控制机制的设计中。时效性优化的研究仍处于起步阶段。该项目产生的新理论成果和实际解决方案预计不仅会对信息论和网络社区产生重大影响，而且还会对数据库和机器学习社区产生重大影响。该项目将侧重于为本科生和 K-12 学生提供研究经验、招募代表性不足的学生并为其提供建议，以及参与课程开发活动。这项研究的目标是开发新的模型、理论和算法来优化信息更新系统的及时性性能。最近提出的一种称为信息年龄或简称“年龄”的指标将被用作研究及时性绩效的关键指标。首先，本研究调查了信道编码对有损信道上传输信息的及时性的影响。其次，本研究研究了新环境中有限陈旧约束下的年龄最小化问题，其中信息可以划分为多个不相交的单元并进行部分更新。最后，本研究引入了一种新的拉模型，其中目的地向源发送查询以拉取感兴趣的信息，并建议使用复制方案来优化及时性性能。

The last two decades have witnessed significant advances in the development of theoretical foundations and control mechanisms for network resource allocation. These newly developed theories and mechanisms have substantially improved network performance in terms of throughput and delay. However, optimizing throughput and delay is insufficient for networked systems that require real-time information update. The state-of-the-art theoretical foundations need to be largely expanded to integrate timeliness of information into the design of network control mechanisms. The research on timeliness optimization is still at its nascent stage. New theoretical results and practical solutions coming out of this project are expected to have a significant impact not only on information theory and networking community, but also on databases and machine learning community. This project will focus on providing research experiences to undergraduate and K-12 students, recruiting and advising underrepresented students, and engaging in curriculum development activities. The goal of this research is to develop new models, theories, and algorithms for optimizing timeliness performance in information-update systems. A recently proposed metric called age-of-information or simply "age", will be employed as a key metric to study timeliness performance. First, this research investigates the impact of channel coding on timeliness of information transmitted over a lossy channel. Second, this research studies the problem of age minimization under a bounded staleness constraint in a new setting where information can be partitioned into multiple disjoint units with partial updates. Finally, this research introduces a new Pull model where the destination sends queries to the sources to pull information of interest and proposes using replication schemes to optimize timeliness performance.