Joint content authentication and error control for wireless multimedia communications

Today, multimedia delivery through wireless networks is rapidly gaining popularity. Many cellular phones are already equipped with an extra large full-color display and various multimedia applications and devices. It is challenging to transmit and access multimedia data through wireless communications channels due to device mobility, power constraints, bandwidth limitations, and an error prone environment. We investigate multimedia services in wireless networks. We propose an integrated service approach for authentication and error control (including error detection, recovery and concealment) that potentially reduces bandwidth requirement and power consumption. Authentication is used in secure wireless communications to ensure the integrity of a message, i.e., that it has not been tampered with and that it originated with the presumed transmitter. To combat transmission errors with the least additional bandwidth requirement, error concealment can be used to obtain a close approximation of the original signal at the receiver end. The efficiency and effectiveness of an error recovery technique rely on the system error detection capabilities. Traditionally, those problems are treated separately using different schemes. We investigate the problem at the application layer, and design a joint media authentication and error control scheme to reduce cost and save resources. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme is efficient and effective.