Maximizing privacy and security of collaborative indoor positioning using zero-knowledge proofs

Abstract

The increasing popularity of wearable-based Collaborative Indoor Positioning Systems (CIPSs) has led to the development of new methods for improving positioning accuracy. However, these systems often rely on protocols, such as iBeacon, that lack sufficient privacy protection. In addition, they depend on centralized entities for the authentication and verification processes. To address the limitations of existing protocols, this paper presents a groundbreaking contribution to the field of wearable-based CIPSs. We propose a decentralized Attribute-based Authentication (ABA) protocol that offers superior levels of privacy protection, untraceability, and unlinkability of user actions. Unlike existing protocols that rely on centralized entities, our approach leverages decentralized mechanisms for authentication and verification, ensuring the privacy of user location data exchange. Through extensive experimentation across multiple platforms, our results demonstrate the practicality and feasibility of the proposed protocol for real-world deployment. Overall, this work opens up new avenues for secure and privacy-preserving wearable-based CIPSs, with potential implications for the rapidly growing field of Internet of Things (IoT) applications.