Cooperative Positioning Optimization in Mobile Social Networks

Mobile positioning technology is one of location-based services (LBS) which locates mobile devices and cooperative positioning is promising to increase its energy efficiency. The cooperative positioning, however, shares location information between the devices and users may be unwilling to provide their location information to others with additional energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a new positioning scheme using social networks, that motivates the users to participate in the cooperative positioning. Firstly, we define the social utility to indicate the strength of the social network relationship between two nodes, based on the number of mutual friends. Then, we formulate an optimization problem to maximize an integrated payoff taking both social utility and limited battery life into account. Next, we propose an efficient algorithm to find the optimal solution. Through extensive simulations, our algorithm is verified in terms of higher integrated payoff.