An information-driven incentive scheme with consumer demand awareness for participatory sensing

Participatory sensing facilitates smartphone users to contribute data to form a body of knowledge. A significant issue which determines the success of participatory sensing is the incentive for contributors. In this paper, we propose an information-driven incentive scheme with consumer demand awareness for participatory sensing. An information utility metric is introduced to measure the quality of sensor information from contributors according to the consumer demand. The contributors with the most information utility are selected and incentivized, which allows us to maximize the satisfaction of the consumers as well as the profits of the service provider. Based on the incentive scheme, contributors and consumers determine their participation levels respectively to maximize their utilities. The performance of the proposed incentive scheme is investigated through extensive simulations, which show an improved information utility and sensing coverage.