Optimizing Peak Age under Intermittent Satellite Connectivity and Store-and-Forward
59th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, California, United States Of America, 26 - 29 October 2025, pp.140-144, (Full Text)
- Publication Type: Conference Paper / Full Text
- Doi Number: 10.1109/ieeeconf67917.2025.11443699
- City: California
- Country: United States Of America
- Page Numbers: pp.140-144
- Middle East Technical University Affiliated: Yes
Abstract
We consider a real-time task-oriented application operating over an intermittently available satellite-based communication network, aiming to collect status updates generated by a remote sensing device. The system is modeled as a scheduling problem over a finite horizon, corresponding to the duration of the task, to minimize the peak Age of Information at the destination. The number of updates that can be transmitted is constrained by a transmission budget. Moreover, the status updates are subject to delays caused by the store-and-forward operation of the satellites, which may vastly vary depending on the network conditions. We investigate three levels of awareness regarding the connectivity conditions of the satellite network: (i) scheduling without any information about connectivity conditions, (ii) scheduling based solely on the current conditions, and (iii) scheduling based on full connectivity knowledge. The first case admits a relatively simple structure, for which a periodic transmission strategy is adopted. The latter two cases are formulated as semi-Markov decision processes and solved to obtain the optimal transmission scheduling policy. Simulation results demonstrate the impact of connectivity awareness on the application performance at the destination. Through a simple modeling approach, we provide first insights into the practically relevant setting of store-and-forward satellite architectures.