No Arabic abstract
Due to its flexible and pervasive sensing ability, crowdsensing has been extensively studied recently in research communities. However, the fundamental issue of how to meet the requirement of sensing robustness in crowdsensing remains largely unsolved. Specifically, from the task owners perspective, how to minimize the total payment in crowdsensing while guaranteeing the sensing data quality is a critical issue to be resolved. We elegantly model the robustness requirement over sensing data quality as chance constraints, and investigate both hard and soft chance constraints for different crowdsensing applications. For the former, we reformulate the problem through Booles Inequality, and explore the optimal value gap between the original problem and the reformulated problem. For the latter, we study a serial of a general payment minimization problem, and propose a binary search algorithm that achieves both feasibility and low payment. The performance gap between our solution and the optimal solution is also theoretically analyzed. Extensive simulations validate our theoretical analysis.
Mobile Crowdsensing has shown a great potential to address large-scale problems by allocating sensing tasks to pervasive Mobile Users (MUs). The MUs will participate in a Crowdsensing platform if they can receive satisfactory reward. In this paper, in order to effectively and efficiently recruit sufficient MUs, i.e., participants, we investigate an optimal reward mechanism of the monopoly Crowdsensing Service Provider (CSP). We model the rewarding and participating as a two-stage game, and analyze the MUs participation level and the CSPs optimal reward mechanism using backward induction. At the same time, the reward is designed taking the underlying social network effects amid the mobile social network into account, for motivating the participants. Namely, one MU will obtain additional benefits from information contributed or shared by local neighbours in social networks. We derive the analytical expressions for the discriminatory reward as well as uniform reward with complete information, and approximations of reward incentive with incomplete information. Performance evaluation reveals that the network effects tremendously stimulate higher mobile participation level and greater revenue of the CSP. In addition, the discriminatory reward enables the CSP to extract greater surplus from this Crowdsensing service market.
Mobile crowdsensing (MCS) has been intensively explored recently due to its flexible and pervasive sensing ability. Although many incentive mechanisms have been built to attract extensive user participation, Most of these mechanisms focus only on independent task scenarios, where the sensing tasks are independent of each other. On the contrary, we focus on a periodical task scenario, where each user participates in the same type of sensing tasks periodically. In this paper, we consider the long-term user participation incentive in a general periodical MCS system from a frugality payment perspective. We explore the issue under both semi-online (the intra-period interactive process is synchronous while the inter-period interactive process is sequential and asynchronous during each period) and online user arrival models (the previous two interactive processes are sequential and asynchronous). In particular, we first propose a semi-online frugal incentive mechanism by introducing a Lyapunov method. Moreover, we also extend it to an online frugal incentive mechanism, which satisfies the constant frugality. Besides, the two mechanisms can also satisfy computational efficiency, asymptotical optimality, individual rationality and truthfulness. Through extensive simulations, we evaluate the performance and validate the theoretical properties of our online mechanisms.
Proper incentive mechanisms are critical for mobile crowdsensing systems to motivate people to actively and persistently participate. This article provides an exposition of design principles of six incentive mechanisms, drawing special attention to the sustainability issue. We cover three primary classes of incentive mechanisms: auctions, lotteries, and trust and reputation systems, as well as three other frameworks of promising potential: bargaining games, contract theory, and market-driven mechanisms.
In this paper, we present a probabilistic adaptation of an Assume/Guarantee contract formalism. For the sake of generality, we assume that the extended state machines used in the contracts and implementations define sets of runs on a given set of variables, that compose by intersection over the common variables. In order to enable probabilistic reasoning, we consider that the contracts dictate how certain input variables will behave, being either non-deterministic, or probabilistic; the introduction of probabilistic variables leading us to tune the notions of implementation, refinement and composition. As shown in the report, this probabilistic adaptation of the Assume/Guarantee contract theory preserves compositionality and therefore allows modular reliability analysis, either with a top-down or a bottom-up approach.
Mobile crowdsensing has shown a great potential to address large-scale data sensing problems by allocating sensing tasks to pervasive mobile users. The mobile users will participate in a crowdsensing platform if they can receive satisfactory reward. In this paper, to effectively and efficiently recruit sufficient number of mobile users, i.e., participants, we investigate an optimal incentive mechanism of a crowdsensing service provider. We apply a two-stage Stackelberg game to analyze the participation level of the mobile users and the optimal incentive mechanism of the crowdsensing service provider using backward induction. In order to motivate the participants, the incentive is designed by taking into account the social network effects from the underlying mobile social domain. For example, in a crowdsensing-based road traffic information sharing application, a user can get a better and accurate traffic report if more users join and share their road information. We derive the analytical expressions for the discriminatory incentive as well as the uniform incentive mechanisms. To fit into practical scenarios, we further formulate a Bayesian Stackelberg game with incomplete information to analyze the interaction between the crowdsensing service provider and mobile users, where the social structure information (the social network effects) is uncertain. The existence and uniqueness of the Bayesian Stackelberg equilibrium are validated by identifying the best response strategies of the mobile users. Numerical results corroborate the fact that the network effects tremendously stimulate higher mobile participation level and greater revenue of the crowdsensing service provider. In addition, the social structure information helps the crowdsensing service provider to achieve greater revenue gain.