A Location Cloaking Algorithm Based on Combinatorial Optimization for Location-Based Services in 5G Networks

In order to satisfy the various requirements of future network services, 5G wireless network is proposed and becoming a hot topic in academic and industrial field. Location-based services are widely used with the development of wireless communication and mobile Internet technology. A number of popular spatial-temporal cloaking technologies have been proposed, and the number of users in an anonymizing spatial region (ASR) is uncontrollable. This paper, based on the semi-trusted server architecture proposes a location cloaking algorithm (LCA) based on combinatorial optimization. First, the semi-trusted server architecture divides the information of mobile users into three parts, so adversaries are unable to obtain the location and identity at the same time, then utilize the spatial $k$ -anonymity algorithm LCA to hide the real locations of user, which controls the number of real users to around $k$ in the anonymous result sets (Aset), so that both the number of users in ASR and the area of ASR are minimized, thereby improving query precision and decreasing the resources consumption. Finally, complete further improvement that the location is distinguishable in ASR and the query contents are diverse in Aset. Simulations show that the LCA performs well on cloaking success rate, query precision, and resources saving.