A Preference-Driven Malicious Platform Detection Mechanism for Users in Mobile Crowdsensing

Exploiting mobile crowdsensing to conduct data collection and analysis brings unprecedented opportunities to promote the development of the Internet of Things(IoT). However, malicious platforms may provide untrusted data or illegally leak users’ information, which leads users in crowdsensing networks to be reluctant to participate in sensing activities. Besides, users are unwilling to report malicious platforms without sufficient incentives. To tackle the problem, a new incentive mechanism is proposed by modeling users’ preferences in this paper. Specifically, two scenarios are considered to detect malicious platforms when users join sensing activities according to the system grasps user’s information, i.e., complete information scenario and partial information scenario. Different incentive algorithms are designed for each scenario to optimize the systems incentive cost. In the complete information scenario, we minimize the total incentive cost by ranking users’ preferences. In the partial information scenario, uniform Distribution and Laplace Distribution are employed to model the distribution of users’ preferences to find the optimal cost. Specifically, we incorporate the concept of non-convexity into design the incentive mechanism, when user preferences obey the Laplace Distribution. By conducting an in-depth exploration the properties of Laplace Distribution, we can transform it into a convex problem to solve it efficiently. The analysis based on these mechanisms lays a theoretical foundation on the detection of malicious platforms. Furthermore, the soundness of modeling and the accuracy of analysis are verified through extensive simulation, which also guides the design of more sophisticated incentive schemes for the detection of malicious platforms.