Mobile Crowd-sensing Applications: Data Redundancies, Challenges, and Solutions

Conventional data collection methods that use Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) suffer from disadvantages such as deployment location limitation, geographical distance, as well as high construction and deployment costs of WSNs. Recently, various efforts have been promoting mobile crowd-sensing (such as a community with people using mobile devices) as a way to collect data based on existing resources. A Mobile Crowd-Sensing System can be considered as a Cyber-Physical System (CPS), because it allows people with mobile devices to collect and supply data to CPSs’ centers. In practical mobile crowd-sensing applications, due to limited budgets for the different expenditure categories in the system, it is necessary to minimize the collection of redundant information to save more resources for the investor. We study the problem of selecting participants in Mobile Crowd-Sensing Systems without redundant information such that the number of users is minimized and the number of records (events) reported by users is maximized, also known as the Participant-Report-Incident Redundant Avoidance (PRIRA) problem. We propose a new approximation algorithm, called the Maximum-Participant-Report Algorithm (MPRA) to solve the PRIRA problem. Through rigorous theoretical analysis and experimentation, we demonstrate that our proposed method performs well within reasonable bounds of computational complexity.

#Safe Mapping Platform: A GIS Mobile Crowd Sensing Platform for COVID-19 Self-Tracking and Self-Risk Managing

Increases in the social sector of open data and online mapping technologies are starting new chances for interactive mapping in many research applications. Mobile crowd sensing is an application that gathers data from a network of conscientious volunteers and implements it for a public benefit which is very helpful for collecting related information during the COVID-19 situation. The paper aims to demonstrate the concept of #Safe Mapping Platform which followed a framework of opensource technology and implementation aspects. The #Safe Mapping Platform was established for self-tracking and self-risk managing by integrating GIS opensource technologies, location-based services, and LINE application. The developed platform can be adapted to the public for self-tracking and self-risk managing in any health issues in the future.

Private Data Aggregation Based on Fog-Assisted Authentication for Mobile Crowd Sensing

In mobile crowd sensing (MCS), the cloud as a single sensing platform undertakes a large number of communication tasks, leading to the reduction of sensing task execution efficiency and the risk of loss and leakage of users’ private data. In this paper, we propose a spatial ciphertext aggregation scheme with collaborative verification of fog nodes. Firstly, the cloud and fog collaboration architecture is constructed. Fog nodes are introduced for data validation and slices transmission, reducing computing cost on the sensing platform. Secondly, a multipath transmission method of slice data is proposed, in which the user identity and data are transmitted anonymously by the secret sharing method, and the data integrity is guaranteed by hash chain authentication. Finally, a spatial data aggregation method based on privacy protection is presented. The ciphertext aggregation calculation of the sensing platform is realized through Paillier homomorphic encryption, and the problem of insufficient data coverage in the sensing region is solved by the position-based weight interpolation method. The security analysis demonstrates that the scheme can achieve the expected security goal. The simulation results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed scheme.