Game Theoretic Analysis of AoI Efficiency for Participatory and Federated Data Ecosystems

Abstract

We investigate the Age of Information (AoI) of status updates, resulting from the convergence of multiple and federated data sources subject to both independent and voluntary participation. In this setting, the effectiveness of the status update requires the simultaneous intervention and aggregation of multiple data, according to a parametric function. Given the distributed nature of the problem, such a setup lends itself to a game theoretic approach, whereby strategic intelligent users act in a distributed fashion towards the maximization of their individual utility. The latter is chosen as a combination of the global AoI resulting from the data aggregation and parametrized by a tunable function, and an individual cost term. We compute the Nash equilibrium of the resulting allocation, and show interesting consequences of the strategic decisions made by the players.