Image Steganography Based on NR-Polar DCSK System over Multipath Fading Channel

Abstract

Protecting sensitive data has become an urgent necessity in wireless communication, which predates the emergence of Internet development, where signals transmitted over a channel are distorted by fading, noise, attackers, and interference, which leads to the loss of sensitive information. This paper introduces an efficient approach for image steganography over a wireless channel based on the New Radio (NR) polar code with Differential Chaos Shift Keying (DCSK) modulation to protect secret information over a Rayleigh fading model in the presence of an Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel. The DCSK is a non-coherent detection method widely used in broad-spectrum communications due to its high security and effectiveness against fading. On the other hand, steganography is one of the most essential techniques for protecting secret information by embedding it in multimedia. In this work, the secret images are hidden in cover stego using the Least Significant Bits (LSB) technique. The simulation outcomes indicate that the Bit Error Rate (BER) is improved by 8 dB gain in this design over the AWGN channel and approximately 4 dB over the combination channel of AWGN and Rayleigh fading. Besides that, the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) reached 80.2750 dB at 26 dB SNR with 32 Spread Factor (SF). This work introduces a hybrid data protection system that consists of steganography and DCSK techniques, where the data has effectively been retrieved by the receiver.

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