An Improved Image Encryption Algorithm for Satellite Applications

Publication date: Available online 22 September 2019Source: Advances in Space ResearchAuthor(s): Youcef Bentoutou, El-Habib Bensikaddour, Nasreddine Taleb, Nacer BounouaAbstractEncryption on-board Earth observation satellites aims to secure the amount of data transmitted to the ground station. During the last two decades, chaos-based encryption has reached an important achievement in securing data transfers. In this paper, an efficient image encryption method based on chaotic maps and the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is proposed for application on-board Earth observation satellites. The proposed method has many technical and attractive features, including a high security level and tolerance to Single Event Upsets (SEU). Performance results for the proposed image encryption system are evaluated and compared to recent works. Moreover, the proposed algorithm was implemented on a modern reconfigurable FPGA device (XILINX Artix-7 XC7A100T) to evaluate the resulting performance and resource utilization. The results show that a fast (1.75 Gbit/s) and a highly secure data encryption is achieved with low power consumption (1.37 W) and that the algorithm is robust, which makes it applicable on board Earth Observation Satellites (EOS). Beyond satellite images, the proposed algorithm is also better suited for the secure encryption of normal digital images.
Source: Advances in Space Research - Category: Science Source Type: research
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