  In this paper we extend the Shiryaev's quickest change detection formulation
by also accounting for the cost of observations used before the change point.
The observation cost is captured through the average number of observations
used in the detection process before the change occurs. The objective is to
select an on-off observation control policy, that decides whether or not to
take a given observation, along with the stopping time at which the change is
declared, so as to minimize the average detection delay, subject to constraints
on both the probability of false alarm and the observation cost. By considering
a Lagrangian relaxation of the constraint problem, and using dynamic
programming arguments, we obtain an \textit{a posteriori} probability based
two-threshold algorithm that is a generalized version of the classical Shiryaev
algorithm. We provide an asymptotic analysis of the two-threshold algorithm and
show that the algorithm is asymptotically optimal, i.e., the performance of the
two-threshold algorithm approaches that of the Shiryaev algorithm, for a fixed
observation cost, as the probability of false alarm goes to zero. We also show,
using simulations, that the two-threshold algorithm has good observation
cost-delay trade-off curves, and provides significant reduction in observation
cost as compared to the naive approach of fractional sampling, where samples
are skipped randomly. Our analysis reveals that, for practical choices of
constraints, the two thresholds can be set independent of each other: one based
on the constraint of false alarm and another based on the observation cost
constraint alone.
