Software defined radio implementation of a secure waveform for real‐time data transmission using universal software radio peripheral

Abstract In the present work, we propose a new approach to secure waveforms for data transmission in software defined radio (SDR) based communication systems. For more precision, SDR implementation and validation, using Universal software radio peripherals (USRPs) B210 platforms, of a chaos‐based cryptosystem is used for securing transmitted multimedia data such as text, image, and video. For this, new GNU‐radio companion (GRC) blocks are developed and integrated in the GRC software environment to use effectively our solution. In this context, we have integrated GRC block for the Lorenz chaotic generator which generates chaotic signals. These signals are then used to generate the encryption keys by inserting a dedicated GRC block. The latest and largest development GRC block concerns the proposed solution for the chaotic synchronization problem, which is a challenge when applying chaotic systems to secure data transmission. The implemented chaotic cryptosystem is based on one time pad cipher, knowing that it's the most suitable for chaos‐based cryptography. The obtained results of the security analysis of the proposed cryptosystem validate its robustness. In fact, the generated encryption keys deemed robust after passing through two statistical tests batteries namely, NIST and DIEHARD. In addition, a good result is obtained by a large security evaluation of the encrypted data through several metrics, which are compared to some previous works. Finally, we have experimentally validated a secure waveform between two USRPs platforms for different types of data information like text, image, and video. Furthermore, a graphical communication interface is designed to guarantee easy access and broad flexible applicability of the developed solution.