Low Energy Interleaved Chaotic Secure Image Coding Scheme for Visual Sensor Networks Using Pascal’s Triangle Transform

The resource-constrained camera integrated Visual Sensor Networks (VSN) have conquered numerous visual aided services from visual surveillance to habitat monitoring. VSN is capable of sensing, processing and communicating visual data wirelessly. These networks are built with inexpensive low power sensor motes with a lightweight processor, limited storage, and bandwidth. The huge amount of redundancy present in the images makes the processing and communication consume more energy than expected. The number of bits must be reduced using energy-efficient compression techniques for efficient transmission. Low computational energy and communication energy are always favored for an increased lifetime of the wireless sensor network. The highly sensitive and self-descriptive nature of images makes security in VSN even more critical. In this work, we propose an energy-efficient low bitrate secured image coder for resource-constrained VSN. Light weight design protocols are highly required in secured image transmission over VSN. Through this communication, we also propose a novel chaotic map using Pascal’s triangle. The system follows a unique interleaved fashion of compression and encryption process to consume less computational resources. A series of tests were carried out to validate the secured image coder’s ruggedness and its suitability in VSN. The performance and the strength of the low bitrate secured image coder are tested with compression efficiency and cryptanalysis tests. Simulations were carried out in Atmel’s ATmega128 processor for energy consumption analysis. The energy consumed by the proposed system for compression, encryption and transmission of an image of size 512
$\times512$
is 109.364mJ (milli Joules), which is only 4.57 % of the energy consumed by raw image transmission. In addition, the system is implemented in real time image sensor platform based on Arduino Due board integrated with OV7670 camera module for real time verification and the experimental results validated the suitability of the indicated scheme in real time VSN.