Minimal Footprint Visual Data Protection for Secure Telemetry in Resource Constrained Wireless Visual Sensing Platforms

Padmanabha Naidu, Vikas (2025) Minimal Footprint Visual Data Protection for Secure Telemetry in Resource Constrained Wireless Visual Sensing Platforms. Masters thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

Wireless Visual Sensor Networks (WVSNs) and image-enabled IoT devices are progressively used in surveillance, environmental monitoring and medical industry, yet their limited computational and memory capacities make conventional cryptographic algorithms unfeasible. Securing visual telemetry in these constrained platforms requires encryption methods with protection while maintaining minimal processing overhead. This work presents a lightweight hybrid Polybius-Vigenere encryption framework designed specifically for resource-constrained visual sensing environments. The proposed system remodels classical cryptographic ciphers by generating a 16x16 Polybius substitution table using a SHA-256-seeded Fisher-Yates shuffle and a Vigenere-style keystream through iterative SHA-256 hashing. A streaming architecture based on blocks has the working memory used by the cipher fixed irrespective of the size of the image to be encrypted, so there is less memory overhead of encryption. A automated experiment pipeline to evaluate entropy and diffusion metric computation, performance metrics and a structured telemetry subsystem to support reproducibility. Experimental results show that the framework achieves perfect reconstruction accuracy and extremely low execution times. Benchmark comparisons with AES-minimal, PRESENT and SIMON confirm competitive performance and comparable entropy characteristics. Security metrics NPCR, UACI and avalanche values indicate strong diffusion behaviour, demonstrating resistance to differential attacks and good randomness. Overall, the work provides a functional and effective foundation for lightweight visual encryption.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Supervisors:	Name Email Mahajan, Kamil UNSPECIFIED
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Lightweight Cryptography; Image Encryption; Wireless Visual Sensor Networks (WVSN); Internet of Things (IoT) Security; Polybius-Vigenere Cipher; Secure Telemetry; Resource-Constrained Devices, Block-Streaming Encryption; Deterministic Keystream Generation; Visual Data Protection; Minimal-Footprint Algorithms; Embedded Systems Security
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > Computer software > Computer Security T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Computer software > Computer Security T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering > Telecommunications > Computer networks > Internet of things
Divisions:	School of Computing > Master of Science in Cyber Security
Depositing User:	Ciara O'Brien
Date Deposited:	04 Sep 2026 08:53
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2026 08:53
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/9815

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