IoT devices improve data accuracy with proactive delayed feedback transmissions
Remote IoT Source Monitoring with Delayed Feedback
Information TheoryNetworking and Internet Architecture
Summary
When IoT devices send sensor data over unreliable channels, they often get feedback about whether their messages were received only after some delay. This delay can cause problems in keeping the sensor data accurate and up to date. The authors compare two ways to send updates: one waiting for feedback before sending more, and another sending extra updates ahead of time. They show that sending updates proactively, even with limited transmission rates, helps keep the data estimates much more accurate.
What this means in practice
- •For iot system developers: Configure sensor data transmission strategies to reduce estimation errors under delayed feedback conditions.
- •For industrial automation teams: Improve monitoring accuracy in factory systems by implementing proactive update transmissions over unreliable wireless links.
Authors
Andrea Munari
Abstract
Remote source monitoring is a key use case for Internet of things (IoT) applications, calling on efficient communications protocols to ensure timely data delivery. In this paper, we consider a practically inspired scenario in which an IoT device reports sensor readings to a gateway over a correlated, lossy channel, receiving feedback on the transmission outcome only after some delay. For this setting, we investigate practical threshold-based reporting strategies for monitoring a Markov process, and evaluate two approaches: a reactive strategy where the node awaits feedback after an update, and a proactive strategy that preemptively transmits a second update. Leveraging Markov renewal processes, we provide an exact performance analysis in terms of the mean squared error (MSE). Our study characterizes the fundamental trade-off between estimation error and communication rate, revealing that proactive transmissions significantly improve MSE even under strict IoT rate constraints.