MixRide: An Energy-Aware Location Privacy Protection Mechanism for the Internet of Drones

Resumo

The Internet of Drones (IoD) is a network paradigm that allows drones to perform several services, gathering and sharing location-based information, representing a piece of the next generation of the Internet of Things (IoT). Location privacy is a paramount requirement in IoD. A few Location Privacy Protection Mechanisms (LPPMs) are designed for IoD. Unfortunately, they are not energy-aware approaches, essential for IoD protocols since drones have power limitations. We present the MixRide, an energy-aware LPPM for IoD to overcome these issues. It provides location privacy through the aerial-grounded vehicle collaboration, where the drones take a ride with grounded vehicles, changing their pseudonyms while saving energy. A comparative experimental evaluation pointed out that MixRide can provide location privacy to the IoD at the same level as the state-of-the-art LPPM while improving the drone's power consumption. Our results also provide new insights on the trade-off between the delay caused by the ride and the drone's energy power consumption.