Obaid Ur-Rehman - Noise Tolerant Data Authentication for Wireless Communication

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With the rapid development and ease in digital content creation and distribution over the Internet, digital data sharing has become a ubiquitous part of our daily lives. This includes data in the form of digital multimedia such as text, audio, video, and images. At the same time, there has been an enormous growth in the methods to compromise the authenticity and authentication methods of data transmitted over modern communication networks as well as the data stored.

Standard authentication mechanisms are very fragile and not robust to any modifications. Even a single bit modification will render the data useless after failing the authentication test at the receiver. Most of the times, a retransmission channel is available and the data can be retransmitted by the source. However, sometimes such a retransmission channel does not exist, e.g., in case of satellite transmission. In such cases, there is a need for data authentication mechanisms to be adopted in such a manner that they are not only able to tolerate the unintentional modifications but also identify, locate, and correct certain modifications if possible.

This is made possible by the use of some recent algorithms for data authentication which cooperate with the techniques for forward error correction, so that minor modifications or errors are not only tolerated but also corrected to the extent possible. This depends on many factors such as the error correction capability of the forward error correction codes used by the noise tolerant authentication method and also the noise tolerance capability of the noise tolerant authentication schemes. It is of course a danger that by allowing more robustness, the security might be compromised. Some of the noise tolerant authentication methods discussed in this book have the ability to configure the robustness using certain parameters of the scheme.

In order to maintain a balance between discussing too much details vs introducing the data authentication mechanisms, this book is organized in seven chapters. The first four chapters introduce the background material needed to understand the next three chapter. The last three chapters are based on the results of the research work conducted by the authors while working at the University of Siegen, Germany.

The salient topics of each chapter in the book are listed below.

Chapter introduces the basics of data authentication in the presence of modifications. Data produced at the source can be modified in many ways from source to sink. This includes intentional and unintentional modifications, where the former ones are more serious but even the latter ones should be given a spatial attention.

Chapter covers the characteristics of a wireless communication channel and how the data transfer is affected by the channel. With the ever-increasing uses of modern gadgets equipped with Internet connectivity, more and more data is being transmitted over the wireless channel in addition to the standard wired channel. Different means to counter the data corruption introduced by communication over a wireless channel are introduced in the chapter.

Chapter discusses the need for robust authentication mechanisms. These authentication mechanisms, as opposed to the standard data authentication mechanisms, are tolerant to certain modifications. Some of these mechanisms are designed to tolerate a few bit modifications, whereas others can additionally also correct the modified data parts by using forward error correction codes as a part of the authentication. Noise tolerant authentication using specially designed message authentication codes as well as digital watermarking is discussed in the chapter.

Chapter introduces the digital watermarking techniques for authentication of multimedia data. This chapter serves as an introduction to the digital watermarking techniques discussed in the following chapters. Digital watermarking, its classification, and characteristics are discussed.

Chapter discusses two digital watermarking techniques for data authentication in the presence of noise. The watermarking techniques discussed in this chapter have the ability of noise tolerant data authentication as well as error correction. The discussed techniques use dual watermarking, where the ability of detection of modified locations is obtained. The additional use of forward error correction codes gives the techniques the ability to correct a few modifications. This is useful if the modifications are introduced unintentionally, e.g., by channel noise.

Chapter covers a method for image authentication using a modified method for image authentication based on standard message authentication codes and channel codes. The discussed method splits the image into important parts, called the region of interest. By authenticating the region of interest using a soft input decryption method and using the authenticated parts as a feedback for decoding the result of channel decoding is also improved in addition to noise tolerant authentication.

Chapter , which is the last chapter, discusses two noise tolerant data authentication algorithms which are based on noise tolerant message authentication codes. These codes are themselves based on the standard message authentication codes. The discussed methods have the ability to detect modifications and localize the modifications to block level. A block size can be defined which controls the granularity of modification localization. These algorithms also have the inherent capability of error correction. If the modifications are more than the allowed limits and are beyond the error correction capability of the forward error correction codes, then the modifications are categorized as forgeries.