Smartphone-based crowdsourcing for network monitoring: Opportunities, challenges, and a case study

Abstract

Smartphone-based crowdsourcing fosters the rise of radically novel systems and applications in the context of network monitoring. This article discusses the most significant opportunities offered by this approach, and the major challenges that have to be faced. Our experience in building a smartphone-based crowdsourcing system, Portolan, is also included to provide a practical background to the discussion and to demonstrate the possible benefits.