Remote IoT Source Monitoring with Delayed Feedback

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.