Location Monitoring Algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper the authors propose a privacy-preserving location monitoring system for wireless sensor networks. Here they design two in network location anonymization algorithms, namely, resource- and quality-aware algorithms that aim to enable the system to provide high quality location monitoring services for system users, while preserving personal location privacy. Both algorithms rely on the well established k-anonymity privacy concept. The resource-aware algorithm aims to minimize communication and computational cost, while the quality-aware algorithm aims to maximize the accuracy of the aggregate locations by minimizing their monitored areas. To utilize the aggregate location information to provide location monitoring services, they use a spatial histogram approach that estimates the distribution of the monitored persons based on the gathered aggregate location information.