Privacy-preserving task allocation for edge computing-based mobile crowdsensing

Abstract In the era of big data, edge computing has coped greatly with the increase in data. Recently, edge computing has been incorporated into mobile crowdsensing (MCS) to collect large-scale data, but existing edge computing-based MCS (EC-MCS) ideally assumes that edge servers are trusted. In this paper, a novel mechanism is proposed that we use semi-honest entities to securely and efficiently complete task assignment in large-scale crowdsensing. Firstly, homomorphic encryption is used to encrypt users’ location information, and the collaboration between edge servers is used to complete task allocation under cipher-text. Then, the optimal users are selected to complete tasks and upload the encrypted sensing data. Moreover, a secure payment mechanism is proposed to avoid fraud problems in semi-honest edge servers. Finally, we analyze the security of our scheme theoretically and conduct a multi-dimensional simulation experiment to prove the effectiveness and availability of the proposed scheme.