TRUST-SC: Truthful Multi-Task Double Auction for Quality-Aware Spatial Crowdsourcing in Strategic Environment

TL;DR

TRUST-SC introduces a truthful multi-task double auction mechanism for spatial crowdsourcing, ensuring incentive compatibility, reliable executor selection, and improved efficiency in strategic environments.

Contribution

It proposes a novel three-tier architecture with a multi-unit double auction for quality-aware spatial crowdsourcing, addressing strategic behavior and scalability.

Findings

Achieves incentive-compatible task allocation and payments.

Effectively identifies reliable executors through quality evaluation.

Demonstrates improved performance over benchmark mechanisms.

Abstract

Spatial crowdsourcing (SC) enables the assignment of location-based tasks to mobile users who must travel to specific locations to perform sensing or service activities. However, SC systems often operate in strategic environments where both task requesters and task executors possess private valuation information, posing challenges for designing efficient and truthful incentive mechanisms. To address these issues, this paper proposes a truthful multi-task double Auction for quality-aware spatial crowdsourcing (TRUST-SC). The proposed framework adopts a three-tier architecture. First, task executors are grouped into spatial clusters to improve scalability and reduce allocation complexity. Second, reliable executors are identified through a majority-voting-based quality evaluation process. Third, tasks are allocated, and payments are determined through a multi-unit double-auction mechanism that guarantees incentive compatibility and individual rationality. Theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed mechanism achieves efficient task allocation, reliable executor selection, and improved performance compared with existing benchmark mechanisms.