PTASIM: Incentivizing Crowdsensing with POI-Tagging Cooperation over Edge Clouds

In this article, we propose points-of-interest (POI)-tagging App-assisted incentive mechanism (PTASIM), an incentive mechanism that explores the cooperation with POI-tagging App for mobile edge crowdsensing (MEC). PTASIM requests App to tag some edges to be POI, which further guides App users to perform tasks at that location. We further model the interactions of users, platform, and App by a three-stage decision process. App first determines the POI-tagging price to maximize its payoff. Platform and users subsequently decide how to determine tasks reward and select edges to be tagged, and how to select the best task to perform, respectively. We analyze the optimal solution in those stages. Specifically, we prove that greedy algorithm could provide the optimal solution for platform's payoff maximization in polynomial time. The numerical results show that: 1) the cooperation with App brings long-term and sufficient participation; and 2) the optimal strategies reduce platform's tasks cost as well as improve App's revenues.