Incentivizing Crowdsensing in IoT through Micropayments: A Simulation Study

Many IoT applications rely on the timely collection and processing of data. Although the technology that allows data collection is readily available, its deployment on a large scale raises many practical issues, the main one probably being: who pays for the infrastructure? IoT deployment could significantly benefit from crowdsourcing: to ensure the successful deployment of a data collection infrastructure, it is crucial to motivate end users, as their active participation and engagement are key to the system's effectiveness and reach. This paper addresses these issues in a practical use case that deals with collecting environmental data. We propose a decentralized crowdsensing architecture where vehicles act as data collectors and transfer data from sources (e.g., sensing devices) to networked access points. The system provides economic incentives to individuals willing to act as data collectors or to operate gateways in the form of micropayments enabled by a blockchain. The proposed architecture is evaluated using a multilevel simulation model that combines existing communication, mobility, and behavioral sub-models. This reduces the time required to build a full simulator and potentially increases the accuracy of the results.