PDA: Privacy-Preserving Data Aggregation for Information Collection

Providing efficient data aggregation while preserving data privacy is a challenging problem in wireless sensor networks research. In this article, we present two privacy-preserving data aggregation schemes for additive aggregation functions, which can be extended to approximate MAX/MIN aggregation functions. The first scheme---Cluster-based Private Data Aggregation (CPDA)---leverages clustering protocol and algebraic properties of polynomials. It has the advantage of incurring less communication overhead. The second scheme---Slice-Mix-AggRegaTe (SMART)---builds on slicing techniques and the associative property of addition. It has the advantage of incurring less computation overhead. The goal of our work is to bridge the gap between collaborative data collection by wireless sensor networks and data privacy. We assess the two schemes by privacy-preservation efficacy, communication overhead, and data aggregation accuracy. We present simulation results of our schemes and compare their performance to a typical data aggregation scheme (TAG), where no data privacy protection is provided. Results show the efficacy and efficiency of our schemes.