Incentivizing WiFi-Based Multilateration Location Verification

Abstract

Due to the proliferation of WiFi devices and the high verification precision, researchers have shown interests in WiFi-based multilateration location verification (WMLV), where multiple WiFi APs (also known as verifiers) verify the location information claimed by a prover. However, it is a high expenditure for any single location-based service provider to deploy densely covered WiFi facilities. Incentivizing independent WiFi owners to corporately verify location information is thus a feasible solution to this plight, yet none of the previous research has taken this into consideration. To this point, we design a double auction-based incentive mechanism for WMLV, which motivates the participation of both provers and verifiers. More importantly, we consider practical situations, where the provers have various verification precision requirements, and different number of verifiers are required by different provers. The proposed double auction mechanism achieves desirable economical properties, including <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">truthfulness, individual rationality, computational efficiency, budget balance,</i> and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">nonnegative social welfare.</i> The desired properties are validated through both theoretical analysis and extensive simulations.