Expandable Mix-Zones as a Deception Technique for Providing Location Privacy on Internet-of-Battlefield Things (IoBT)

Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) constitutes the next generation of combat-aid services intended to excel in the battlefield operations of the teams on the ground such as seals and special operation units. It is a concept derived from the broader notion of the Internet of Things (IoT), which is the network of interconnected devices that can communicate and exchange data over the Internet. In some cases of the challenging operational environments, where IoBT is deployed, it might be of utmost importance to preserve the exact locations of the soldiers on the field. This concept is referred to as location privacy, and the act of safeguarding location privacy is termed as 'deception', which forms the central theme of this article. There are some methods proposed to achieve deception for IoT and this article provides an expansion to one of the promising ones, called 'mix-zones', in which multiple user locations are mixed, and anonymized within expandable Zones.