LCBPA: two-stage task allocation algorithm for high-dimension data collecting in mobile crowd sensing network

Abstract

Mobile crowd sensing (MCS) is a novel emerging paradigm that leverages sensor-equipped smart mobile terminals (e.g., smartphones, tablets, and intelligent wearable devices) to collect information. Compared with traditional data collection methods, such as construct wireless sensor network infrastructures, MCS has advantages of lower data collection costs, easier system maintenance, and better scalability. However, the limited capabilities make a mobile crowd terminal only support limited data types, which may result in a failure of supporting high-dimension data collection tasks. This paper proposed a task allocation algorithm to solve the problem of high-dimensional data collection in mobile crowd sensing network. The low-cost and balance-participating algorithm (LCBPA) aims to reduce the data collection cost and improve the equality of node participation by trading-off between them. The LCBPA performs in two stages: in the first stage, it divides the high-dimensional data into fine-grained and smaller dimensional data, that is, dividing an m-dimension data collection task into k sub-task by K-means, where (k < m). In the second stage, it assigns different nodes with different sensing capability to perform sub-tasks. Simulation results show that the proposed method can improve the task completion ratio, minimizing the cost of data collection.