A Contract-Based Incentive Mechanism for Joint Data Sensing and Communication in Mobile Crowdsourcing Networks

Mobile crowdsourcing (MCS) has become an innovative technology that utilizes mobile users for data sensing and collecting. However, due to the selfishness of mobile users and limited task time requirements, mobile users are not willing to participate in MCS without any reward. In our study, a contract-based incentive mechanism is investigated to tackle the incentive mechanism for joint data sensing and communication (IMJDSC) within the asymmetric information context. The IMJDSC optimization problem is formulated as achieving the maximum utility of the MCS platform subjected to individually rational and incentive compatible constraints. The sufficient and necessary conditions of the feasible contract are derived to deduce the optimal reward strategy. Considering the non-convexity of the IMJDSC optimization problem, we develop an efficient iterative optimization algorithm to obtain the optimal data sensing and communication strategies. Numerous simulations are conducted to validate the feasibility and efficiency of our proposed method.