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

在过去的二十年里，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。这些新开发的理论和机制大大提高了网络的吞吐量和延迟方面的性能。然而，优化吞吐量和延迟是不够的网络系统，需要实时信息更新。最先进的理论基础需要在很大程度上扩展，以将信息的及时性纳入网络控制机制的设计。时效性优化的研究尚处于起步阶段。该项目的新理论成果和实际解决方案预计不仅会对信息理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，招募和指导代表性不足的学生，并参与课程开发活动。本研究的目标是开发新的模型，理论和算法，以优化信息更新系统的及时性性能。一个最近提出的度量称为年龄的信息或简单的“年龄”，将作为一个关键的指标来研究及时性的表现。首先，本研究探讨了信道编码对信息在有损信道上传输的及时性的影响。其次，本研究在一个新的环境下，信息可以被划分为多个不相交的部分更新单元的有界陈旧约束下的年龄最小化问题。最后，本研究引入了一种新的拉取模型，其中目标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.