Competition between senders can improve receiver estimates in status updates
Timely Persuasion with Opposing Senders: When Does Competition Help the Receiver?
Information TheoryComputer Science and Game TheoryNetworking and Internet Architecture
Summary
This paper looks at how two competing sources send updates about a changing situation and how this affects a person or system trying to keep track. When both senders want different outcomes, their competition can sometimes help the receiver get better information than just relying on default guesses. The authors show exactly when one sender’s silence or full effort is best and how this impacts the receiver’s overall benefit. They use a game-based model and mathematical formulas to understand this interaction.
What this means in practice
- •For network schedulers: Optimize report timing in systems where multiple nodes send status updates with conflicting interests, improving overall monitoring accuracy.
- •For cybersecurity analysts: Design communication monitoring that accounts for competing information sources to better detect manipulative reporting in real time.
Tested on simulated data.
Authors
Ahmet Bugra Gundogan, Melih Bastopcu
Abstract
Status updates let a receiver track a changing process, but a sender that controls when they are sent can steer the receiver's estimate without misreporting. We study competition between two such senders with opposing preferences, who report on a binary continuous-time Markov chain using state-dependent Poisson rates under individual budgets. The receiver follows the reports through a zero-order-hold estimator only if this yields at least the long-run weighted correct-estimation utility of a prior-based default estimate. We model the interaction as a Stackelberg game in which the sender favored by this default leads, the opposing sender follows, and the receiver then selects its estimator. We characterize the pure-strategy equilibria in closed form. When the follower can obtain positive utility against a silent leader, limited state-$0$ reporting by the leader merely frees part of the follower's budget for state-$1$ reports, so every optimal leader policy is either silence or full-budget state-$0$ reporting, depending on explicit budget thresholds. A single sender with the same total budget leaves the receiver at its default utility, whereas the full-budget intervention outcome makes the receiver's participation constraint slack and strictly improves its utility. At the intervention threshold, silence and full-budget intervention yield identical sender payoffs but different receiver utilities. Numerical results illustrate these regimes and compare equilibrium performance with a receiver-optimal reporting benchmark.