Joint authentication and forward error correction of still images

Providing protection to the transmission of digital multimedia contents is nowadays an important requisite for many applications. However, it can also represent a great challenge, especially when dealing with wireless channels where, apart from preventing illegal data access, it would desiderable to possess the ability of discriminating between malicious data modifications and data distortions due to noise. In this paper we present a joint authentication, integrity verification and channel coding scheme, applied to the secure image transmission scenario. Experimental results, obtained through Monte Carlo simulations, show that the employed security mechanisms guarantee an efficient and secure way for real-time image encryption and transmission through wireless networks. © EURASIP, 2010.