Efficient 3G/4G Budget Utilization in Mobile Sensing Applications

This paper explores efficient 3G/4G budget utilization in mobile sensing applications. Distinct from previous research work that either relied on limited WiFi access points or assumed the availability of unlimited 3G/4G communication capability, we offer a more practical mobile sensing system that leverages potential 3G/4G budgets that participants contribute at will, and uses it efficiently customized for the needs of multiple mobile sensing applications with heterogeneous sensitivity to environmental changes. We address the challenge that the information of data generation and WiFi encounters is not a priori knowledge, and propose an online decision making algorithm that takes advantage of participants' historical data. Three typical mobile sensing applications, vehicular application, mobile health and video sharing application are explored. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed algorithms lead to significantly better system performance compared to alternative solutions for both applications.