Distortion free image-in-image communication with implementation in FPGA

The proliferation of the digitized media (audio, image and video) introduces a challenging problem for data transmission in the network environment. In this paper, a novel, simple and low cost algorithm that serves the purpose of distortion free covert image-in-image communication is proposed. Its very large scale integration (VLSI) implementation using field programmable gate array (FPGA) is also developed. A binary equivalent message signal is developed first from the combination of the auxiliary gray scale image information and the carrier gray scale image (original) using channel coding and spatial bi-phase modulation scheme. The auxiliary image information is then decoded from the distorted/distortion free version of the original image using binary message under certain noise constraint. Implementation of the proposed low cost algorithm can be speeded up significantly by hardware realization. The developed hardware design allows data transmission at the rate of 4.706 Mbits/s at 80 MHz clock frequency. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier GmbH.