Enhancing wireless video streaming using lightweight approximate authentication

In this paper, we propose a novel lightweight approximate authentication algorithm that provides efficient protection for wireless video streaming where attacks on the stream are possible, but classical integrity protection algorithms are impractical because bit errors occur naturally. The benefits of the proposed algorithm over other algorithms are fast execution and small message authentication code size. Moreover, the approximate authentication supports error resilient video decoding by dropping seriously damaged packets, thus improving the perceived quality of the video stream. The performance of the algorithm is demonstrated via numerical analysis, simulations and measurements over modeled and real wireless channels.