CAREER: Signal Processing Approaches for Multimedia Security and Information Protection

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

Min Wu U of MD College Park 0133704 Having recognized that the advantages offered by the information technology era cannot be fully deployed without the guarantee on the security and protection of multimedia data, this project focuses on the investigation of multimedia security and information protection through two types of complementary signal processing techniques, namely, multimedia encryption and data embedding. The main function of multimedia encryption is to protect the confidentiality and thus performs access control, while data embedding or digital watermarking concerns how to associate a set of imperceptible data with the host media in a seamless way. The embedded data can be used to accomplish ownership verification or authentication even after decryption. The research component of this project involves three parts. The investigator first explores the protection of content confidentiality under three different levels of threats by designing and analyzing signal processing based encryption algorithms that are computationally efficient and easily compatible with lossy communications. In addition, new challenging problems of multimedia data hiding are studied based on a layered algorithmatic architecture, and a software testbed is developed. Finally, the project investigates the joint use of encryption and data hiding as well as their interplay for providing comprehensive protection. The educational component of this project focuses on two themes, namely, using multimedia as a powerful tool to enhance the productivity of multimedia education, and using carefully designed projects to provide students with hands-on experience that will well prepare them for joining the future technical force of information technology. In addition to the curriculum development, the investigator makes special effort to nurture the under-represented students especially young women and to attract them to step into the EE/CS disciplines.