Secure Image Transmission in UAV Applications using 2D Chaos and Hybrid Watermarking Method

The rapid growth of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has been largely driven by various fields, ranging from agriculture to entertainment. In most of these fields, UAVs serve as platforms for capturing images and transmitting data to other UAVs or ground stations. However, this process is vulnerable to unauthorized access and various security risks. Digital Image Watermarking (DIW) has emerged as a potential solution to strengthen the authentication of digital image transmission within UAV systems. To address this issue, a hybrid DIW technique employing Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), 2D chaotic system, row permutation, column permutation, and Arnold transform encryption is proposed. The binary watermark image containing authentication/copyright information is encrypted using 2D Chaos, row-column permutation and Arnold transform. Then encrypted watermark is embedded in the original image using DWT-SVD. The reverse process is carried out at the receiver end to extract the watermak information. The proposed method enhances the authenticity of watermark images during transmission. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves high imperceptibility, with Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) values exceeding 45 dB, Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) values close to 1, Normalized Correlation (NC) of 0.99, and a Bit Error Rate (BER) of 0.0054. This indicates that the method exhibits strong robustness against various attacks, ensuring the reliability and authenticity of the transmitted images.