An incentive mechanism with privacy protection in mobile crowdsourcing systems

In order to improve the efficiency and utility of mobile crowdsourcing systems, this paper proposes an incentive mechanism with privacy protection in mobile crowdsourcing systems. Combining the advantages of offline incentive mechanisms and online incentive mechanisms, this paper proposes an incentive mechanism that selects the worker candidates statically, and then dynamically selects winners after bidding. The proposed incentive mechanism includes two algorithms which are an improved two-stage auction algorithm (ITA) and a truthful online reputation updating algorithm (TORU). Through simulations, we verify the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed incentive mechanism, which can solve the freeriding problem and improve the efficiency and utility of mobile crowdsourcing systems effectively. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.