Push- and Pull-based Effective Communication in Cyber-Physical Systems
This work addresses communication efficiency for Cyber-Physical Systems, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing Value of Information concepts.
The paper tackles the problem of optimizing communication between sensors and actuators in Cyber-Physical Systems by analyzing push- and pull-based strategies, finding that while push-based strategies offer better optimal solutions, they can underperform in simple scenarios.
In Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs), two groups of actors interact toward the maximization of system performance: the sensors, observing and disseminating the system state, and the actuators, performing physical decisions based on the received information. While it is generally assumed that sensors periodically transmit updates, returning the feedback signal only when necessary, and consequently adapting the physical decisions to the communication policy, can significantly improve the efficiency of the system. In particular, the choice between push-based communication, in which updates are initiated autonomously by the sensors, and pull-based communication, in which they are requested by the actuators, is a key design step. In this work, we propose an analytical model for optimizing push- and pull-based communication in CPSs, observing that the policy optimality coincides with Value of Information (VoI) maximization. Our results also highlight that, despite providing a better optimal solution, implementable push-based communication strategies may underperform even in relatively simple scenarios.