Energy Consumption Characterization of Privacy Preserving Algorithms for Participatory Sensing Systems

Participatory sensing is a new sensing paradigm where a group of users voluntarily gather, analyze, share and report data of interest utilizing their mobile devices. Given the large number of cellular users, these systems could be utilized to  address or study  issues or problems relevant to large populations. One of the most important problems in participatory sensing systems is that of the privacy, i.e., users will not be willing to participate if the system does not include privacy preserving mechanisms. However, privacy-preserving mechanisms may consume a considerate amount of resources, particularly energy due additional processing and data transmission, resulting in another issue that may prevent users from participating. This project investigates the energy consumption associated with the most important privacy-preserving mechanisms available in the literature and the tradeoff between user privacy and energy consumption.