An Investigation into the Application of Chaotic Map Encryption for Image Transfer in an IoT Framework

Image encryption is a special branch of cryptography owing to its unique features like pixel correlation, larger space requirement and redundancy. But is it highly important to maintain its privacy and to prevent unauthorized access as it is transferred or uploaded over public communication networks. When sensitive data like surveillance images are to be transmitted from an IoT network with limited resources, the need for the encryption algorithm to be lightweight yet resilient to various attacks is also high. Hence, researchers have divulged into the application of chaotic map for encryption owing to its malleable computational complexity. Chaotic maps are mathematical models that exhibit complex, unpredictable behavior while remaining deterministic. Chaotic systems are employed for their characteristics like high ergodicity, pseudo randomness and the fact that even slight changes to its initial parameters will set in a highly unpredictable outcome. This paper aims to examine various chaotic maps through numerical simulations focusing on their properties, common performance metrics and metrics with a view of real time application of the same in a computationally restrained environment like CPU usage and execution time. Our results shed light on the appropriateness of various chaotic maps for different application and enhance our comprehension of chaos theory.