Continuous Anonymity with Users in the Same Direction in Road Networks

Compared with the Euclidean space, road network is restricted by its direction in traveling, velocity and some other attribute profiles. So the algorithms that designed for the Euclidean space are usually invalid and difficult to provide privacy protection services. In order to cope with this problem, we have proposed an algorithm to provide the service of collecting anonymous users that their directions in traveling similar with the initiator in the road networks. In this algorithm, the shortest distance between multiple road segments is calculated, and then utilizes the distance to select the user who has the same direction in traveling with the initiator. Consequently, the problem of the discrepancy of the anonymous users in the routing that invalidates the location privacy protection is solved. At last, we had compared this algorithm with other similar algorithms, and through the results of the comparison and the cause of this phenomenon, we have concluded that this algorithm is better not only in the level of privacy protection, but in the performance of execution efficiency.