A Partial Video Encryption Scheme for Mobile Handheld Devices with Low Power Consideration

H.264 video applications based on mobile handheld devices are becoming more and more popular. How to protect the security has become an important topic. However, the significant power consumption of video encryption algorithms executing the limited battery capacity of handheld devices restricts the abroad use. In this paper, we propose a low power partial encryption scheme based on H.264, it combines the RC4 stream cipher, and encrypts intra 4 × 4 prediction mode, Intra 16 × 16 prediction mode, exponential-Golomb for MVD and level_suffix of CAVLC respectively. Experimental and analytic results show that the proposed method exhibits low power, low complexity and good security, and it hasn't effect on compression ratio. Moreover, it is suitable for secure mobile multimedia handheld products.