Estimation with Strategic Sensors

Abstract

We introduce a model of estimation in the presence of strategic, self-interested sensors. We employ a game-Theoretic setup to model the interaction between the sensors and the receiver. The cost function of the receiver is equal to the estimation error variance while the cost function of the sensor contains an extra term which is determined by its private information. We start by the single sensor case in which the receiver has access to a noisy but honest side information in addition to the message transmitted by a strategic sensor. We study both static and dynamic estimation problems. For both these problems, we characterize a family of equilibria in which the sensor and the receiver emplo..