DPSense: Differentially Private Crowdsourced Spectrum Sensing

Abstract

Dynamic spectrum access (DSA) has great potential to address worldwide spectrum shortage by enhancing spectrum efficiency. It allows unlicensed secondary users to access the underutilized licensed spectrum when the licensed primary users are not transmitting. As a key enabler for DSA systems, crowdsourced spectrum sensing (CSS) allows a spectrum sensing provider (SSP) to outsource the sensing of spectrum occupancy to distributed mobile users. In this paper, we propose DPSense, a novel framework that allows the SSP to select mobile users for executing spatiotemporal spectrum-sensing tasks without violating the location privacy of mobile users. Detailed evaluations on real location traces confirm that DPSense can provide differential location privacy to mobile users while ensuring that the SSP can accomplish spectrum-sensing tasks with overwhelming probability and also the minimal cost.