Preserving privacy of agents in participatory-sensing schemes for traffic estimation

Farhad Farokhi, Iman Shames

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A measure of privacy infringement for agents (or participants) travelling across a transportation network in participatory-sensing schemes for traffic estimation is introduced. The measure is defined to be the conditional probability that an external observer assigns to the private nodes in the transportation network, e.g., location of home or office, given all the position measurements that it broadcasts over time. An algorithm for finding an optimal trade-off between the measure of privacy infringement and the expected estimation error, captured by the number of the nodes over which the participant stops broadcasting its position, is proposed. The algorithm searches over a family of policies in which an agent stops transmitting its position measurements if its distance (in terms of the number of hops) to the privacy sensitive node is smaller than a prescribed threshold. Employing such symmetric policies are advantageous in terms of the resources required for implementation and the ease of computation. The results are expanded to more general policies. Further, the effect of the heterogeneity of the population density on the optimal policy is explored. Finally, the relationship between the betweenness measure of centrality and the optimal privacy-preserving policy of the agents is numerically explored.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2016 IEEE 55th Conference on Decision and Control, CDC 2016
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages6739-6744
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781509018376
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 27 Dec 2016
Externally publishedYes
Event55th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, CDC 2016 - Las Vegas, United States
Duration: 12 Dec 201614 Dec 2016

Publication series

Name2016 IEEE 55th Conference on Decision and Control, CDC 2016

Conference

Conference55th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, CDC 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityLas Vegas
Period12/12/1614/12/16

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