User location privacy protection mechanism for location-based services

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things(IoT),Location-Based Services(LBS)are becoming more and more popular.However,for the users being served,how to protect their location privacy has become a growing concern.This has led to great difficulty in establishing trust between the users and the service providers,hindering the development of LBS for more comprehensive functions.In this paper,we first establish a strong identity verification mechanism to ensure the authentication security of the system and then design a new location privacy protection mechanism based on the privacy proximity test problem.This mechanism not only guarantees the confidentiality of the user s information during the subsequent information interaction and dynamic data transmission,but also meets the service provider's requirements for related data.

Location Privacy in Device-Dependent Location-Based Services:Challenges and Solution

With the evolution of location-based services(LBS),a new type of LBS has already gain a lot of attention and implementation,we name this kind of LBS as the Device-Dependent LBS(DLBS).In DLBS,the service provider(SP)will not only send the information according to the user’s location,more significant,he also provides a service device which will be carried by the user.DLBS has been successfully practised in some of the large cities around the world,for example,the shared bicycle in Beijing and London.In this paper,we,for the first time,blow the whistle of the new location privacy challenges caused by DLBS,since the service device is enabled to perform the localization without the permission of the user.To conquer these threats,we design a service architecture along with a credit system between DLBS provider and the user.The credit system tie together the DLBS device usability with the curious behaviour upon user’s location privacy,DLBS provider has to sacrifice their revenue in order to gain extra location information of their device.We make the simulation of our proposed scheme and the result convince its effectiveness.

Location and Its Semantics in Location-Based Services

Starting with a simple presentation of location determination techniques, physical location and geographic location as two common kinds of location description methods are discussed. The semantic location concept is then introduced and a correction is given, which especially emphasizes that location property is an important part of semantic location. By analyzing the connotation and extension of every geographic location, what should be contained in a location property is determined. Using a hierarchical model, the relations and associations among locations are clearly described. To realize a formalized description of semantic location, an ontology technique that can adequately describe semantic information of location is used. Organized by ontology web language, a location ontology model allows semantic location to be read and processed by computer. The location ontology model realizes the knowledge description of location information and establishes an important foundation to personalized preference services in location based services.

Privacy Preserving Scheme for Location-Based Services

Homomorphic encryption schemes make it possible to perform arithmetic operations, like additions and multiplications, over encrypted values. This capability provides enhanced protection for data and offers new research directions, including blind data processing. Using homomorphic encryption schemes, a Location-Based Service (LBS) can process encrypted inputs to retrieve encrypted location-related information. The retrieved encrypted data can only be decrypted by the user who requested the data. The technology still faces two main challenges: the encountered processing time and the upper limit imposed on the allowed number of operations. However, the protection of users’ privacy achieved through this technology makes it attractive for more research and enhancing. In this paper we use homomorphic encryption schemes to build a fully secure system that allows users to benefit from location-based services while preserving the confidentiality and integrity of their data. Our novel system consists of search circuits that allow an executor (i.e. LBS server) to receive encrypted inputs/requests and then perform a blind search to retrieve encrypted records that match the selection criterion. A querier can send the user’s position and the service type he/she is looking for, in encrypted form, to a server and then the server would respond to the request without any knowledge of the contents of the request and the retrieved records. We further propose a prototype that improves the practicality of our system.

Location Based Services Acceptance and Adoption Evaluation: An Investigation on Mobile Phone Users’ Response to Awareness and Utilization of LBS Technology in Nairobi Kenya

Location Based Navigation System (LBNS) is a specific Location Based Service (LBS) purely for navigational purpose. These systems resolve position of a user by using GNSS/GPS positioning technologies, to which supplementary information on goods and services are tagged. The navigation services have become popular and can be installed on mobile phones to provide route information, location of points of interest and user’s current location. LBS has continued to face challenges which include “communication” process towards user reference. Location Based Service System conveys suitable information through a mobile device for effective decision making and reaction within a given time span. This research was geared at understanding the state of LBS technology acceptance and adoption by users in Nairobi Kenya. To do this a quantitative study was carried out through a questionnaire, to investigate mobile phone users’ response on awareness and use of LBS technology. Testing the growth of this technology in this region compared to predictions in previous studies using Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), it is evident that many users may be aware of GPS functionality in mobile phones but are certainly yet to fully embrace the technology as they rarely use it. This points to some underlying challenges towards this technology within this part of the World, thereby recommending for deliberate monitoring and evaluation of LBS technology for sustenance growth based on user satisfaction and acceptance for improved usability.

Services and Applications Based on Mobile User’s Location Detection and Prediction

Many wireless applications are deployed and available to customers via their mobile phones. Variety of these applications and services are based on determination of the current or future location of mobile user. Location based services (LBS) are one of the vital applications which are subdivided into two main categories: economical category and public category. Economic applications include mobile marketing, entertainment and tracking applications. Whereas, emergency cases, safety, traffic management, Muslims’ applications and public information applications are sort of public applications. The first part of the paper presents a new proposed system with developed procedure to recreate public and economic applications with high positioning accuracy and good authentication of users’ data. The developed system is created to enhance both location based services and network allocation resources within mobile network platform using either normal or GPS supported mobile equipment. The second part of the paper introduces future location prediction of mobile user dependent applications. New algorithm is developed depending on utilizing both intra-cell Movement Pattern algorithm (ICMP) [1] and hybrid uplink time Difference of Arrival and Assisted GPS technique (UTDOA_AGPS) [2]. It has been noticed that ICMP algorithm outperforms other future location prediction algorithms with high precision and within suitable time (less than 220) msec. However, UTDOA_AGPS guarantees high precession of mobile user independent of the surrounding environment. The proposed technique is used to enhance reliability and efficiency of location based services using cellular network platform.

Smart Prediction for Seamless Mobility in F-HMIPv6 Based on Location Based Services

This paper proposed a new scheme for smooth handoff over F-HMIPv6 networks based on Location Based Services(LBS). It uses the available information about mobile node(MN) such as user mobility patterns and MN's velocity to reduce handoff latency. In the proposed scheme, the movement pattern of users plays an important role in the performance analysis. The proposed scheme develops LBS that records a number of mobility patterns based on user daily behavior, and exploits these information to reduce the handoff latency. The proposed scheme is analyzed and compared with F-HMIPv6 protocol. The results show that it improves the performance in terms of handoff latency, packet delivery cost, and location update cost. Specifically, the proposed scheme achieves the tradeoff between realizing a smooth handoff and minimizing the cost that is the demand for all customers of mobile services.

A Generalized Location Privacy Protection Scheme in Location Based Services

When the user getting location based services by the traditional technology,his location information of region is always be exposed.However,in modern mobile networks,even the current geographical region is a part of privacy information.To solve this problem,a new generalized k-anonymity location privacy protection scheme in location based services(LPPS-GKA)with the third trust servicer is proposed.And it can guarantee the users get good location-based services(LBS)without leaking the information of the geo-location region,which has protected the perfect privacy.Analysis shows that LPPS-GKA is more secure in protecting location privacy,including region information,and is more efficient than other similar schemes in computational and communicational aspects.It is suitable for dynamic environment for different user’s various privacy protection requests.

Design and implementation of user information sharing system using location-based services for social network services

Internet takes a role as a place for communication between people beyond a space simply for the acquisition of information.Recently,social network service(SNS)reflecting human’s basic desire for talking and communicating with others is focused on around the world.And location-based service(LBS)is a service that provides various life conveniences like improving productivity through location information,such as GPS and WiFi.This paper suggests an application combining LBS and SNS based on Android OS.By using smart phone which is personal mobile information equipment,it combines location information with user information and SNS so that the service can be developed.It also maximizes sharing and use of information via twit based on locations of friends.This proposed system is aims for users to show online identity more actively and more conveniently.

Geographical Analysis of Smoking in Leeds: A GIS-Based Location-Allocation Technique for the Optimal Location of Smoking Cessation Services

Smoking is associated with several illnesses in the UK. Smoking rate in Leeds is higher than the national average. Finding optimal locations for stop-smoking services will be a good place to start in reducing smoking rates. The study utilizes a GIS-Based location-allocation method for the optimal distribution of smoking cessation centres in relation to the spatial distribution of the smoking population in Leeds. The demand for the smoking cessation clinics was estimated based on the 2009 General Life Style (GLS) statistics on age and social class stratification of smoking rates for the UK. Leeds specific rates were then obtained from the 2001 census key statistics data on socioeconomic status and age structure for output areas via Census Area Statistics Website (CASWEB). The research findings show that spatial inequalities in smoking rate exist in output areas of Leeds. Poorer and non-skilled populations are demonstrated to have higher smoking rates compared with wealthier neighbourhoods. The study confirms the capability of GIS-Based location-allocation techniques to be useful modelling tools for determining the best locations for health facilities. The model allocates services in relation to the spatial patterns of demand in a fashion that minimises average travel distance.

Location Service Information Supporting System Based on Ontology

In order to solve the problem of how to collect and manage large amount of location information and improve the accuracy of location service, interactive information supporting system based on ontology and location service is presented in this paper. It can transmit special information about users＇ location to front-end instantaneously, so it is very convenient for their daily life. It makes full use of the available wireless communication, which is easy to arrange and convenient for users.

Greedysearch based service location in P2P networks

A model is built to analyze the performance of service location based on greedy search in P2P networks. Hops and relative QoS index of the node found in a service location process are used to evaluate the performance as well as the probability of locating the top 5% nodes with highest QoS level. Both model and simulation results show that, the performance of greedy search based service location improves significantly with the increase of the average degree of the network. It is found that, if changes of both overlay topology and QoS level of nodes can be ignored during a location process, greedy-search based service location has high probability of finding the nodes with relatively high QoS in small number of hops in a big overlay network. Model extension under arbitrary network degree distribution is also studied.

Location Based Navigation Service Technology: Development of an Optimization Algorithm for Multivariate Contextual Cartographic Content in Location Based Navigation Service

User response or reaction to navigation applications is influenced by relevance in geographic information, in terms of cartographic context and content delivered within a definite time, providing a direct impact to outcome or consequence based on decision making and hence user reaction. Location Based Navigation Services (LBNS) have continuously advanced in cartographic visualization, making maps interpretation easy and ubiquitous to any user, as compared to pre-historic times when maps were a preserve of a few. Despite rapid growth in LBNS, there exist challenges that may be characterized as technical and non-technical challenges, among them being process of conveying geospatial information to user. LBNS system deliver appropriate information to a user through smartphone (mobile device) for effective decision making and response within a given time span. This research focuses on optimization of cartographic content for contextual information in LBNS to users, based on prevailing circumstances of various components that constitute it. The research looks into Geographic Information Retrieval (GIR), as a technical challenge centered on a non-technical issue of social being of user satisfaction, leading to decision making in LBNS, hence response and outcome. Though advanced technologically, current LBNS on information sourcing depends on user manual web pages navigation and maneuver, this can be painstaking and time consuming that it may cause unnecessary delay in information delivery, resulting to delayed information response time (DIRT). This in turn may lead to unappropriate decision making with erroneous reaction or response being taken, resulting in loss of opportunity, resources, time and even life. Optimization in LBNS is achieved by a mathematical relationship developed between user status, mobile device variables against cartographic content. The relationship is in turn applied in LBNS android application to fulfill optimization solution for user consumption.

Factors influencing user adoption of location based service:From the expanded TAM perspective

Purpose:This study intends to examine the factors influencing user adoption of location based service(LBS).Design/methodology/approach:This paper develops the research model for user adoption of LBS with the technology acceptance model(TAM) as the theoretical foundation.Using a questionnaire and sampling method,empirical data was collected from 386 participants.Structured equation modeling was used to test the validity of the proposed model.Findings:The results show that I) perceived ease of use.perceived usefulness and perceived playfulness were direct determinants of behavioral intention,and perceived ease of use has the greatest impact of the three;2) emergency,ubiquity,technology maturity and social trust all have positive and significant impacts on perceived ease of use;3) emergency and social trust significantly influence perceived usefulness positively:4) individualization and social impact significantly affect perceived playfulness positively.Research limitations:Subjects were from China’s mainland,which limits the generalizability of the research findings.The interaction effects of age,gender and user experience were not included.Practical implications:This study offers LBS operators,marketers and application developers insights into the way to attract more users by increasing perceived usefulness,ease of use and playfulness of LBS.Originality/value:Location based service is still a relatively new concept and there were few theoretical and empirical studies that examine user adoption of the serv ice.This study contributes to existing LBS adoption studies by modifying and extending TAM and meanwhile the empirical study will help the research community gain a deeper understanding of the factors affecting user adoption of LBS.

Benign Strategy for Recommended Location Service Based on Trajectory Data

A new collaborative filtered recommendation strategy oriented to trajectory data is proposed for communication bottlenecks and vulnerability in centralized system structure location services. In the strategy based on distributed system architecture, individual user information profiles were established using daily trajectory information and neighboring user groups were established using density measure. Then the trajectory similarity and profile similarity were calculated to recommend appropriate location services using collaborative filtering recommendation method. The strategy was verified on real position data set. The proposed strategy provides higher quality location services to ensure the privacy of user position information.

Reinforcement Learning-Based Sensitive Semantic Location Privacy Protection for VANETs

Location-based services(LBS)in vehicular ad hoc networks(VANETs)must protect users’privacy and address the threat of the exposure of sensitive locations during LBS requests.Users release not only their geographical but also semantic information of the visited places(e.g.,hospital).This sensitive information enables the inference attacker to exploit the users’preferences and life patterns.In this paper we propose a reinforcement learning(RL)based sensitive semantic location privacy protection scheme.This scheme uses the idea of differential privacy to randomize the released vehicle locations and adaptively selects the perturbation policy based on the sensitivity of the semantic location and the attack history.This scheme enables a vehicle to optimize the perturbation policy in terms of the privacy and the quality of service(QoS)loss without being aware of the current inference attack model in a dynamic privacy protection process.To solve the location protection problem with high-dimensional and continuous-valued perturbation policy variables,a deep deterministic policy gradientbased semantic location perturbation scheme(DSLP)is developed.The actor part is used to generate continuous privacy budget and perturbation angle,and the critic part is used to estimate the performance of the policy.Simulations demonstrate the DSLP-based scheme outperforms the benchmark schemes,which increases the privacy,reduces the QoS loss,and increases the utility of the vehicle.

Recommending Friends Instantly in Location-based Mobile Social Networks

Differently from the general online social network(OSN),locationbased mobile social network(LMSN),which seamlessly integrates mobile computing and social computing technologies,has unique characteristics of temporal,spatial and social correlation.Recommending friends instantly based on current location of users in the real world has become increasingly popular in LMSN.However,the existing friend recommendation methods based on topological structures of a social network or non-topological information such as similar user profiles cannot well address the instant making friends in the real world.In this article,we analyze users' check-in behavior in a real LMSN site named Gowalla.According to this analysis,we present an approach of recommending friends instantly for LMSN users by considering the real-time physical location proximity,offline behavior similarity and friendship network information in the virtual community simultaneously.This approach effectively bridges the gap between the offline behavior of users in the real world and online friendship network information in the virtual community.Finally,we use the real user check-in dataset of Gowalla to verify the effectiveness of our approach.

Policy driven and multi-agent based fault tolerance for Web services

This paper proposes a policy driven and multi-agent based model to enhance the fault tolerance and recovery capabilities of Web services in distributed environment. The evaluation function of fault specifications and the corresponding handling mechanisms of the services are both defined in policies, which are expressed in XML. During the implementation of the services,the occurrences of faults are monitored by the service monitor agent through the local knowledge on the faults. Such local knowledge is dynamically generated by the service policy agent through querying and parsing the service policies from the service policies repository. When the fault occurs, the service process agent will focus on the process of fault handling and service recovery, which will be directed with the actions defined in the policies upon the specific conditions. Such a policy driven and multi-agent based fault handling approach can address the issues of flexibility, automation and availability.

Elliptical Cell Based Beamforming Design with an Improved β-Fairness Power Allocation for HSR Communication Systems

In this paper,a beamforming scheme to improve the coverage in high-speed railway communication systems is investigated.A dedicated coverage model,where the coverage cell is an ellipse rather than the traditional circular or linear,is considered.Based on the elliptical coverage cell,an optimization problem for the beamforming design is formulated to maximize the percentage of railway coverage,subject to the constraints on equal expected designed propagation gain(the gain obtained by a combination of designed beam and propagation channel)on the elliptical curve,i.e.,the expectation of designed propagation gain on the elliptical curve are all equal.Considering that the coverage can be improved by increasing the minimum designed propagation gain on the railway,the problem can be recast to maximizing the equal expected designed propagation gain on the elliptical curve.Subsequently,a beamforming design with an improved β-fairness power allocation,where the optimization problem is formulated to maximize the minimum expected received power over time with the constraints on elliptical cell based beamforming and mobile service amount,is proposed to further improve the coverage.An alternating iteration algorithm is developed to find the optimal beamforming vector and the instantaneous transmit power.Through numerical results,it is found that the beamforming designed on the elliptical curve covers longer railway than beamforming designed on the railway directly,and the coverage of elliptical cell based beamforming can be increased with the eccentricity.In addition,beamforming with the improvedβ-fairness power allocation can further improve the railway coverage and mobile service amount simultaneously.Moreover,it is shown that the larger eccentricity of the ellipse with appropriately chosen BS location,the larger coverage distance.

TSLV:Time-Slice-Based Location Verification for VANET

Position-spoofing-based attacks seriously threaten the security of Vehicular Ad Hoc Network(VANET).An effective solution to detect position spoofing is location verification.However,since vehicles move fast and the topology changes quickly in VANET,the static location verification method in Wireless Sensor Network(WSN) is not suitable for VANET.Taking into account the dynamic changing topology of VANET and collusion,we propose a Time-Slice-based Location Verification scheme,named TSLV,to resist position spoofing in VANET.Specifically,TSLV transforms the dynamic topology into static topology by time slice and each time slice corresponds to a verification process.The verifier can implement location verification for the corresponding prover.During the verification process,the verifier first filters out vehicles which provide unreasonably claimed locations,and then uses the Mean Square Error(MSE)-based cluster approach to separate the consistent vehicles by time slice,and uses the consistent set for its verification.In addition,security analysis and simulation show that TSLV can defend against the collusion attack effectively.