Distributed versus centralized computing of coverage in mobile crowdsensing

The expected spatial coverage of a crowdsensing platform is an important parameter that derives from the mobility data of the crowdsensing platform users. We tackle the challenge of estimating the anticipated coverage while adhering to privacy constraints, where the platform is restricted from accessing detailed mobility data of individual users. Specifically, we model the coverage as the probability that a user detours to a point of interest if the user is present in a certain region around that point. Following this approach, we propose and evaluate a centralized as well as a distributed implementation model. We examine real-world mobility data employed for assessing the coverage performance of the two models, and we show that the two implementation models provide different privacy requirements but are equivalent in terms of their outputs.