CrowdBLPS: A Blockchain-Based Location-Privacy-Preserving Mobile Crowdsensing System

Abstract

With the popularization of intelligent terminals, especially current trends, such as "Industrie 4.0" and the Internet of Things, mobile crowdsensing is becoming one of the promising applications built on smart devices in mobile networks. However, the existing mobile crowdsensing models are mostly based on a centralized platform, which is not fully trusted in reality and results in the existence of fraud and other security problems. Furthermore, the data quality collected through crowdsensing is varied, and the location privacy is difficult to guarantee, especially at the worker selection stage. To solve these two problems, an effective blockchain-based location-privacy-preserving crowdsensing model, CrowdBLPS, is proposed in this article. First, the idea of a blockchain is introduced into this model. The decentralized structure and the consensus approach are applied to realize the nonrepudiation and nontampering of information. Second, to improve the data sensing quality and protect worker privacy, a two-stage approach, including the preregistration stage and the final selection stage, is proposed. Finally, we further implement a prototype on the Ethereum public testing network, and the experimental results show the feasibility, availability, and reliability of CrowdBLPS.

IoT Data Qualification for a Logistic Chain Traceability Smart Contract

“…In the domain of crowdsensing platforms, there are many recent works, proposing to use the blockchain in order to improve the quality of the collected IoT data, such as the works of Gu et al [ 24 ], Nguyen and Ali [ 25 ], Wei et al [ 26 ], Cheng et al [ 27 ], Huang et al [ 28 ], Zou et al [ 29 ] and Javaid et al [ 30 ]. Their propositions are based essentially on users’ reviews, reputation and reward mechanisms to incentivize the users to improve the quality of their provided data.…”

Blockchain-Enabled Privacy-Preserving Location Sharing Scheme for LBSNs

“…e decentralized location privacypreserving method was proposed by Zhang et al [16] to protect the location privacy of task and achieve the multilevel location privacy preserving of workers. By making use of the decentralized structure and consensus approach of Blockchain, Zou et al [17] proposed the two-stage approach realize the nonrepudiation and nontampering of data. Also, it enhanced the sensing quality and protected the data privacy of workers.…”

Editorial: Blockchain in Industrial IoT Applications: Security and Privacy Advances, Challenges, and Opportunities

“…The platform is designed to facilitate secure communications, verification of transactions, and privacy preserving features. Zou, Xi, Wang, and Xu [11] also highlighted the importance of ensuring quality of crowdsourced data. Specifically, they focused on crowdsensing data quality and its location privacy, and presented a blockchain-based location privacy-preserving crowdsensing model.…”