Task Assignment in Mobile Crowdsensing: Present and Future Directions

Mobile crowdsensing has wide application perspectives and tremendous advantages over traditional sensor networks due to its low cost, extensive coverage, and high sensing accuracy properties. Task assignment is a crucial issue in mobile crowdsensing systems which is intended to achieve a good tradeoff between task quality and task cost. The design of efficient task assignment mechanisms has attracted a lot of attention and much work has been carried out. In this article, we present a comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art task assignment mechanisms in mobile crowdsensing systems. We will first introduce several fundamental issues in task assignment and classify existing mechanisms based on different design criteria. Then we introduce how each of the existing mechanisms works and discuss their merits and deficiencies. Finally, we discuss challenging issues and point out some future directions in this area.