Piggyback CrowdSensing (PCS): Energy Efficient Crowdsourcing of Mobile Sensor Data by Exploiting Smartphone App Opportunities

Fueled by the widespread adoption of sensor-enabled smart-phones, mobile crowdsourcing is an area of rapid innova-tion. Many crowd-powered sensor systems are now part of our daily life – for example, providing highway congestion information. However, participation in these systems can easily expose users to a significant drain on already limited mobile battery resources. For instance, the energy burden of sampling certain sensors (such as WiFi or GPS) can quickly accumulate to levels users are unwilling to bear. Crowd system designers must minimize the negative energy side-effects of participation if they are to acquire and maintain large-scale user populations. To address this challenge, we propose Piggyback Crowd-Sensing (PCS), a system for collecting mobile sensor dat