Secure Transmission of Space Images using Joint Encryption Compression

The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) has issued data compression standards for multi-spectral images aimed to reduce the amount of data transmitted from Earth observation satellites (EOS) to ground stations. Confidentiality of compressed image assumed to be provided by Separate modules which consume mass, power and volume of the space craft. This paper investigate the possibility of applying joint encryption compression to protect compressed image during its transmission by randomized switching between two coding modes in the entropy coder stage of CCSDS-123 compression standard which achieves sufficient security without introducing much complexity to the compression algorithm or affecting compression performance.