Age-Optimal Transmission of Rateless Codes in an Erasure Channel

Songtao Feng, Jing Yang

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

20 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this paper, we examine a status updating system where updates generated by the source are sent to the monitor through an erasure channel. We assume each update consists of k symbols and the symbol erasure in each time slot follows an independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Bernoulli process. We assume rateless coding scheme is adopted at the transmitter and an update can be successfully decoded if k coded symbols are received successfully. We assume perfect feedback available at the source, so that it knows whether a transmitted symbol has been erased instantly. Then, at the beginning of each time slot, the source has the choice to start transmitting a new update, or continue with the transmission of the previous update if it is not delivered yet. We adopt the metric "Age of Information" (AoI) to measure the freshness of information at the destination, where the AoI is defined as the age of the latest decoded update at the destination. Our objective is to design an optimal online transmission scheme to minimize the time-average AoI. The transmission decision is based on the instantaneous AoI, the age of the update being transmitted, as well as the number of successfully delivered symbols of the update. We formulate the problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) and identify the monotonic threshold structure of the optimal policy. Numerical results corroborate the structural properties of the optimal solution.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2019 IEEE International Conference on Communications, ICC 2019 - Proceedings
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
ISBN (Electronic)9781538680889
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2019
Event2019 IEEE International Conference on Communications, ICC 2019 - Shanghai, China
Duration: May 20 2019May 24 2019

Publication series

NameIEEE International Conference on Communications
Volume2019-May
ISSN (Print)1550-3607

Conference

Conference2019 IEEE International Conference on Communications, ICC 2019
Country/TerritoryChina
CityShanghai
Period5/20/195/24/19

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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