Joint content authentication and error control for wireless multimedia communications

Consumers have witnessed a paradigm shift in the way multimedia information is received and distributed. Today, multimedia through wireless network is rapidly gaining popularity. Many cellular phones are already equipped with extra large full-color display, digital camera, media player, web browser, multimedia messaging, video player, and MP3 player. Transmitting and accessing multimedia data through wireless communications channels are challenging due to device mobility. power constraint, bandwidth limitation, and error prone environment. We investigate multimedia services in wireless networks. In this paper, 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. In secure wireless communication, authentication is used to ensure the integrity of a message, i.e., that the message or data stream has not been tampered with and that it originated with the presumed transmitter. To combat transmission errors with 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 on application layer and design joint media authentication and error control scheme, much like taking the 'killing two birds with one stone' strategy to reduce cost and save resources. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme is efficient and effective.