A Framework for Efficient and Convenient Evaluation of Trajectory Compression Algorithms

Trajectory compression algorithms eliminate redundant information in the history of a moving object. Such compression enables efficient transmission, storage, and processing of trajectory data. Although a number of compression algorithms have been proposed in the literature, no common benchmarking platform for evaluating their effectiveness exists. This paper presents a benchmarking framework for efficiently, conveniently, and accurately comparing trajectory compression algorithms. This framework supports various compression algorithms and metrics defined in the literature, as well as three synthetic trajectory generators that have different trade-offs. It also has a highly extensible architecture that facilitates the incorporation of new compression algorithms, evaluation metrics, and trajectory data generators. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of trajectory compression algorithms, evaluation metrics and data generators in conjunction with detailed discussions on their unique benefits and relevant application scenarios. Furthermore, this paper describes challenges that arise in the design and implementation of the above framework and our approaches to tackling these challenges. Finally, this paper presents evaluation results that demonstrate the utility of the benchmarking framework.