Professor Myungchul Kim and his research group from the School of Computing have developed a video transmission framework that selectively encrypts video metadata. This technology enhances transmission security to an exceptional level while reducing computational resource consumption.

On March 13, the study was published in Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC) under the title “Secure video transmission framework for battery-powered video devices.” This technology, termed “Encrypted packet transmission of communication system”, has been granted a patent in Korea and is waiting for patent application evaluation in the US.

Conventional methods of video transmission encrypt the entire video or selectively encrypt it randomly without any data identification steps. A drawback to these methods is that the encryption process can be hindered when computing capability is limited. Professor Kim’s research addresses this problem by proposing a real-time video transmission framework that selectively encrypts only the important video metadata on a per-packet basis, taking into consideration the available computing power of the video recording device. It first identifies each packet of the video according to a criterion by evaluating the information obtained from the packet headers. This classifies the packets by importance, and only the frames of the packets determined important will be rearranged for data encryption. The encoded data is then transmitted to the receiving device. The extent of encryption is decided upon instant evaluation of available computational resources of the transmission device, and the data is communicated in multiple transmission paths to enhance security. Received data is rearranged and decoded in units available for real-time video streaming.

Experimentation with a camera device on a commercial video drone successfully demonstrated that this framework improves transmission security while decreasing consumption of computing resources, such as CPU or battery, by more than half of what is required by conventional transmission schemes. This versatile technology can be applied to any type of video codec, a software used to compress or decompress the video. 

“University-industry cooperation is in progress so this technology can be employed in areas where video transmission security is crucial, such as online conferencing or education, surveillance cameras of smart cities, drone video transmission, and AR and VR technology,” said Professor Kim. Amid the COVID-19 crisis that has largely shifted our lives online, it is expected to contribute to enhancing privacy protection of online video meetings in workplaces or educational institutions.