The proliferation of mobile devices has facilitated the prevalence of participatory sensing applications in which participants collect\nand share information in their environments. The design of a participatory sensing application confronts two challenges: ââ?¬Å?privacyââ?¬Â\nand ââ?¬Å?incentiveââ?¬Â which are two conflicting objectives and deserve deeper attention. Inspired by physical currency circulation system,\nthis paper introduces the notion of E-cent, an exchangeable unit bearer currency. Participants can use the E-cent to take part in\ntasks anonymously. By employing E-cent, we propose an E-cent-based privacy-preserving incentive mechanism, called EPPI. As a\ndynamic balance regulatorymechanism, EPPI can not only protect the privacy of participant, but also adjust thewhole systemto the\nideal situation, under which the rated tasks can be finished at minimal cost. To the best of our knowledge, EPPI is the first attempt\nto build an incentive mechanism while maintaining the desired privacy in participatory sensing systems. Extensive simulation and\nanalysis results show that EPPI can achieve high anonymity level and remarkable incentive effects.
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