An Efficient Privacy-Preserving Incentive Scheme without TTP in Participatory Sensing Network

Abstract: Along with the development of wireless communication technology, a mass of mobile devices are gaining stronger sensing capability, which brings a novel paradigm to light: participatory sensing networks (PSNs). PSNs can greatly reduce the cost of wireless sensor networks, and hence are becoming an efficient way to obtain abundant sensing data from surrounding environment. Therefore, PSNs would lead to significant improvement in various fields, including cognitive communication. However, the large-scale deployment of participatory sensing applications is hindered by the lack of incentive mechanism, security and privacy concerns. It is still an ongoing issue to address all three aspects simultaneously in PSNs. In this paper, we construct an efficient privacy-preserving incentive scheme without trusted third party (TTP) for PSNs to motivate user-participation. This scheme allows each participant to earn credits by contributing data privately. Using blind and partially blind signatures, the proposed scheme is proved to be secure for privacy and incentive. Additionally, the performance evaluation in terms of computation and storage indicates that the proposed scheme has higher efficiency.