A robust image encryption scheme over wireless channels

In traditional image encryption system, decryption is extremely sensitive to packet loss. However, in wireless networks, packet loss is inevitable. Compressed sensing (CS) theory shows that sparse signal can be recovered from few incomplete measurements of it. Strong randomness of measurement matrix and irrelevance among the elements of the measurement vector imply that measurement process can be regarded as encryption process. So, this paper, based on CS theory, presents a new image encryption scheme with robustness to packet loss. In the scheme, we design a Gaussian random measurement matrix as the key to realize data encryption. Moreover, to enhance the incoherence between the plain-image and the cipher-image, we add a random disturbance term to the measurements (cipher-image) and thus improve the security level of the cipher-image. Numerical experiments show that the proposed method not only has well anti-attack ability but also is robust to packet loss, which can still decrypt plain-image even when the packet loss ratio is up to 50%.