Applications of Modulation in a McEliece-Like Symmetric-Key Scheme

A new McEliece-like symmetric-key scheme is proposed in this paper. Modulation is applied as a step of encryption to provide two functions: modulation and scrambling. The mapping process of modulation is controlled by error vectors, which is different from we are familiar with. Analysis shows that the new scheme can keep an acceptable security level and achieve a smaller key size in comparison with the previous McEliece-like symmetric-key schemes. Moreover, there is no trade-off between error correcting performance and the security level.