A Group-Level Incentive Scheme for Data Collection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Utilizing mobile devices such as PDAs, cell phones to collect and deliver sensor data is considered as a promising application in future ubiquitous computing environment. In such application scenarios, the human factor is becoming increasingly important. In this paper, we propose a group-level incentive scheme targeted for encouraging mobile users to collect sensor data. Such idea of widening the scope of incentive from device- level to group-level is inspired by the incentive scheme of blood donation in real life. Mobile users earn credits by collecting and delivering sensor data with their mobile devices and they may consume the credits to access the services provided by wireless sensor networks applications. The main idea of the group-level incentive scheme is to group mobile users into social groups and share credits so that credits earned by one user can be consumed by another user in the same group. Through theoretical analysis and simulation we illustrate the potential of the proposed solution.