Wavelet transform-based steganographic method for secure data communication using OFDM system

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanjay I. Nipanikar ◽  
V. Hima Deepthi

Purpose Fueled by the rapid growth of internet, steganography has emerged as one of the promising techniques in the communication system to obscure the data. Steganography is defined as the process of concealing the data or message within media files without affecting the perception of the image. Media files, like audio, video, image, etc., are utilized to embed the message. Nowadays, steganography is also used to transmit the medical information or diagnostic reports. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the novel wavelet transform-based steganographic method is proposed for secure data communication using OFDM system. The embedding and extraction process in the proposed steganography method exploits the wavelet transform. Initially, the cost matrix is estimated by the following three aspects: pixel intensity, edge transformation and wavelet transform. The cost estimation matrix provides the location of the cover image where the message is to be entrenched. Then, the wavelet transform is utilized to embed the message into the cover image according to the cost value. Subsequently, in the extraction process, the wavelet transform is applied to the embedded image to retrieve the message efficiently. Finally, in order to transfer the secret information over the channel, the newly developed wavelet-based steganographic method is employed for the OFDM system. Findings The experimental results are evaluated and performance is analyzed using PSNR and MSE parameters and then compared with existing systems. Thus, the outcome of our wavelet transform steganographic method achieves the PSNR of 71.5 dB which ensures the high imperceptibility of the image. Then, the outcome of the OFDM-based proposed steganographic method attains the higher PSNR of 71.07 dB that proves the confidentiality of the message. Originality/value In the authors’ previous work, the embedding and extraction process was done based on the cost estimation matrix. To enhance the security throughout the communication system, the novel wavelet-based embedding and extraction process is applied to the OFDM system in this paper. The idea behind this method is to attain a higher imperceptibility and robustness of the image.

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amir M.U. Wagdarikar ◽  
Ranjan K. Senapati

Purpose The technique for hiding confidential data in specific digital media by enhancing the graphical contents is known as watermarking. The dissemination of information over a secure channel is essential for multimedia applications. The purpose of this study is to develop a secure communication approach for OFDM system. Design/methodology/approach This paper exploits a secure communication in the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system using wavelet-based video watermarking technique. In this work, the Chronological-MS algorithm is used for securing the data communication in the OFDM system. Here, the secret message is embedded in video frames using wavelet transform for hiding sensitive information and the hidden information is transmitted over the OFDM system. The Chronological-MS algorithm is used for selecting the optimal regions in the video for embedding secret message. In embedding phase, wavelet coefficients are obtained by applying wavelet transform on the frame for embedding the secret message. Meanwhile, in extraction phase, the inverse wavelet transform is applied to extract the secret message. Findings Considering number of frames, the maximum Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) value is attained by proposed Wavelet + Chronological MS method for Video 2 with value 73.643 dB, respectively. Meanwhile, the minimum mean squared error (MSE) attained by the proposed Wavelet + Chronological MS method is when considering number of frames with MSE values as 0.001 for both Videos 1 and 2. The minimum bit error rate (BER) value is attained by the proposed method with value 0.00009 considering random noise with Video 1. Thus, the proposed Wavelet + Chronological MS have shown better results than the existing techniques. Originality/value This work proposes a wavelet-based watermarking method using Chronological-MS, for initiating secured communication over an OFDM. One of the main advantages of wavelets is that they offer a simultaneous localization in time and frequency domain. Hence, the proposed method offers the highly secured data transmission over the OFDM.


Author(s):  
Brian Sloan ◽  
Olubukola Tokede ◽  
Sam Wamuziri ◽  
Andrew Brown

Purpose – The main purpose of the study is to promote consideration of the issues and approaches available for costing sustainable buildings with a view to minimising cost overruns, occasioned by conservative whole-life cost estimates. The paper primarily looks at the impact of adopting continuity in whole-life cost models for zero carbon houses. Design/methodology/approach – The study embraces a mathematically based risk procedure based on the binomial theorem for analysing the cost implication of the Lighthouse zero-carbon house project. A practical application of the continuous whole-life cost model is developed and results are compared with existing whole-life cost techniques using finite element methods and Monte Carlo analysis. Findings – With standard whole-life costing, discounted present-value analysis tends to underestimate the cost of a project. Adopting continuity in whole-life cost models presents a clearer picture and profile of the economic realities and decision-choices confronting clients and policy-makers. It also expands the informative scope on the costs of zero-carbon housing projects. Research limitations/implications – A primary limitation in this work is its focus on just one property type as the unit of analysis. This research is also limited in its consideration of initial and running cost categories only. The capital cost figures for the Lighthouse are indicative rather than definitive. Practical implications – The continuous whole-life cost technique is a novel and innovative approach in financial appraisal […] Benefits of an improved costing framework will be far-reaching in establishing effective policies aimed at client acceptance and optimally performing supply chain networks. Originality/value – The continuous whole-life costing pioneers an experimental departure from the stereo-typical discounting mechanism in standard whole-life costing procedures.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naiming Xie ◽  
Chuanzhen Hu ◽  
Songming Yin

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to establish a combined model for selecting key indexes of complex equipment, and then improve the cost forecasting precision of the model. The problem how to choose the key elements of complex products has always been concerned on many fields, such as cost assessment, investment decision making, etc. Design/methodology/approach – Using Grey System Theory to establish a cost estimation model of complicated equipment is more reasonable under the few data and poor information. Therefore, this paper constructs cost index’s system of complex equipment, and then quantitative and qualitative analysis methods are utilized to calculate the grey entropy between the characteristic parameter and the behavior parameters. Further, establish the grey relational clustering matrix of the behavior sequences by using the grey relative incidence analysis. Finally, the authors select key indicators according to the grey degree. Findings – The experiment demonstrates that the cost key parameters of complex equipment can be successfully screened out by the proposed approach, and the cost estimation accuracy of complicated products is improved. Practical implications – The method proposed in this paper could be utilized to solve some practical problems, particularly the selection of cost critical parameters for complex products with few samples and poor information. Taking the cost key indexes of civil aircraft as an example, the results verified the validity of the GICM model. Originality/value – In this paper, the authors develop the method of GICM model. Taking the data of civil aircraft as an example, the authors screen the key indicators of complex products successfully, and improve the prediction accuracy of the GM (1, N) model by using the selected parameters, which provides a reference for some firms.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pournima Sridarran ◽  
Kaushal Keraminiyage ◽  
Leon Herszon

Purpose Project-based industries face major challenges in controlling project cost and completing within the budget. This is a critical issue as it often connects to the main objectives of any project. However, accurate estimation at the beginning of the project is difficult. Scholars argue that project complexity is a major contributor to cost estimation inaccuracies. Therefore, recognising the priorities of acknowledging complexity dimensions in cost estimation across similar industries is beneficial in identifying effective practices to reduce cost implications. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to identify the level of importance given to different complexity dimensions in cost estimation and to recognise best practices to improve cost estimation accuracy. Design/methodology/approach An online questionnaire survey was conducted among professionals including estimators, project managers, and quantity surveyors to rank the identified complexity dimensions based on their impacts in cost estimation accuracy. Besides, in-depth interviews were conducted among experts and practitioners from different industries, in order to extract effective practices to improve the cost estimation process of complex projects. Findings Study results show that risk, project and product size, and time frame are the high-impact complexity dimensions on cost estimation, which need more attention in reducing unforeseen cost implications. Moreover, study suggests that implementing a knowledge sharing system will be beneficial to acquire reliable and adequate information for cost estimation. Further, appropriate staffing, network enhancement, risk management, and circumspect estimation are some of the suggestions to improve cost estimation of complex projects. Originality/value The study finally provides suggestions to improve cost estimation in complex projects. Further, the results are expected to be beneficial to learn lessons from different industries and to exchange best practices.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Upendra Raju ◽  
N. Amutha Prabha

PurposeSteganography is a data hiding technique used in the data security. while transmission of data through channel, no guarantee that the data is transmitted safely or not. Variety of data security techniques exists such as patch work, low bit rate data hiding, lossy compression etc. This paper aims to increase the security and robustness.Design/methodology/approachThis paper describes, an approach for multiple images steganography that is oriented on the combination of lifting wavelet transform (LWT) and discrete cosine transform (DCT). Here, we have one cover image and two secret images. The cover image is applied with one of the different noises like Gaussian, Salt & Pepper, Poisson, and speckle noises and converted into different color spaces of YCbCr, HSV, and Lab.FindingsDue to the vast development of Internet access and multimedia technology, it becomes very simple to hack and trace secret information. Using this steganography process in reversible data hiding (RDH) helps to prevent secret information.Originality/valueWe can divide the color space converted image into four sub-bands of images by using lifting wavelet transform. By selecting lower bands, the discrete cosine transform is computed for hiding two secret images into the cover image and again one of the transformed secret images is converted by using Arnold transform to get the encrypted/embedded/encoded image. To extract the Stego image, we can apply the revertible operation. For comparing the results, we can calculate PSNR, SSIM, and MSE values by applying the same process for all color spaces of YCbCr, HSV, and Lab. The experimental results give better performance when compared to all other spaces.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rim Zouari-Hadiji ◽  
Yamina Chouaibi

Purpose This paper aims to examine the effect of the corporate ethical approach on the cost of equity capital. This study is conducted on a large international sample on behalf of the world’s most engaged firms from an ethical point of view in 2015. Design/methodology/approach The multivariate linear regression model is used to meet the purpose of this study and research hypotheses are also examined using a sample of 80 of most ethical firms in the world during the year 2015. Moreover, three variables (i.e. business ethics, corporate social responsibility and executive compensation based on the achievement of sustainable development goals) are used to reflect the corporate ethical approach and the implied cost of equity capital is used for estimating the cost of equity. In this regard, equity cost estimation is the most appropriate approach to test the effect of business ethics on the cost of financing firms. Findings Based on a sample of 80 firms emerging as the world’s most ethical firms in 2015, the results revealed that firms with better ethics scores are significantly associated with a reduced cost of equity capital. This paper also demonstrates that the executive incentive pays that are based on the objectives of sustainable development are able to explain different outcomes regarding the relation between corporate ethical behaviors and the cost of equity. These findings support arguments in the literature that firms with socially responsible practices have a higher valuation and lower risk. Originality/value This study provides implications for global regulators and policymakers when setting social reporting standards, suggesting that corporate ethical engagement reduces the cost of equity capital by decreasing the information asymmetry and thereby reducing the firms’ risk. Therefore, the findings may be informative to international managers and investors when considering the effect of business ethics on the firm’s ex-ante cost of equity. In this perspective, the voluntary disclosure of information makes it possible to mitigate the problems of asymmetry of information and conflict of interest between the firm and its main providers of capital, which could reduce the cost of equity.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdulwahed Fazeli ◽  
Mohammad Saleh Dashti ◽  
Farzad Jalaei ◽  
Mostafa Khanzadi

PurposeAnalyzing different scenarios at the design stage of construction projects has always been a challenging task. One of the main parameters that helps owners in making better decisions in designing their buildings is to look after the cost perspective on different design scenarios. Thus, this study aims to propose a semi-automated BIM-based cost estimation approach that enables practitioners to estimate the cost of projects based on different design scenarios by an accurate and agile system.Design/methodology/approachThis study proposes an integrated framework, through which the cost estimation standard of Iran (FehrestBaha) is linked to the materials quantity take-offs (QTO) from BIM models. The performance of the system is based on connecting the classification standards of UniFormat and MasterFormat to the cost estimation standard of FehrestBaha. A BIM-based extension in the Revit environment is developed to automate the cost estimation process.FindingsTo evaluate the efficiency of the proposed approach in cost estimation, it is implemented to estimate the cost of the architectural discipline in a real construction project. The results indicate that the proposed BIM-based approach estimated the cost of the architectural discipline with an acceptable level of accuracy.Practical implicationsThe proposed approach could be used by practitioners to have an agile and accurate BIM-based cost estimation of different scenarios during design process. The semi-automated system considerably reduces the time of cost estimation in comparison to the traditional manual approaches, particularly in complex structures. Owners are able to easily trace changes in project cost according to any changes in components and materials of the BIM model. Furthermore, the proposed approach provides a practical roadmap for BIM-based cost estimation based on cost estimation standards in different countries.Originality/valueUnlike the traditional manual cost estimation approaches, the proposed BIM-based approach is not highly dependent on the knowledge of experienced estimators, which therefore facilitates its implementation. Furthermore, automating both QTO process and the required calculations in this approach increases the accuracy of cost estimation while decreasing the probability of human errors or omission occurrence.


TAPPI Journal ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 17-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
HAKIM GHEZZAZ ◽  
LUC PELLETIER ◽  
PAUL R. STUART

The evaluation and process risk assessment of (a) lignin precipitation from black liquor, and (b) the near-neutral hemicellulose pre-extraction for recovery boiler debottlenecking in an existing pulp mill is presented in Part I of this paper, which was published in the July 2012 issue of TAPPI Journal. In Part II, the economic assessment of the two biorefinery process options is presented and interpreted. A mill process model was developed using WinGEMS software and used for calculating the mass and energy balances. Investment costs, operating costs, and profitability of the two biorefinery options have been calculated using standard cost estimation methods. The results show that the two biorefinery options are profitable for the case study mill and effective at process debottlenecking. The after-tax internal rate of return (IRR) of the lignin precipitation process option was estimated to be 95%, while that of the hemicellulose pre-extraction process option was 28%. Sensitivity analysis showed that the after tax-IRR of the lignin precipitation process remains higher than that of the hemicellulose pre-extraction process option, for all changes in the selected sensitivity parameters. If we consider the after-tax IRR, as well as capital cost, as selection criteria, the results show that for the case study mill, the lignin precipitation process is more promising than the near-neutral hemicellulose pre-extraction process. However, the comparison between the two biorefinery options should include long-term evaluation criteria. The potential of high value-added products that could be produced from lignin in the case of the lignin precipitation process, or from ethanol and acetic acid in the case of the hemicellulose pre-extraction process, should also be considered in the selection of the most promising process option.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (10) ◽  
pp. 1682-1695
Author(s):  
Foziyah Zakir ◽  
Kanchan Kohli ◽  
Farhan J. Ahmad ◽  
Zeenat Iqbal ◽  
Adil Ahmad

Osteoporosis is a progressive bone disease that remains unnoticed until a fracture occurs. It is more predominant in the older age population, particularly in females due to reduced estrogen levels and ultimately limited calcium absorption. The cost burden of treating osteoporotic fractures is too high, therefore, primary focus should be treatment at an early stage. Most of the marketed drugs are available as oral delivery dosage forms. The complications, as well as patient non-compliance, limit the use of oral therapy for prolonged drug delivery. Transdermal delivery systems seem to be a promising approach for the delivery of anti-osteoporotic active moieties. One of the confronting barriers is the passage of drugs through the SC layers followed by penetration to deeper dermal layers. The review focuses on how anti-osteoporotic drugs can be molded through different approaches so that they can be exploited for the skin to systemic delivery. Insights into the various challenges in transdermal delivery and how the novel delivery system can be used to overcome these have also been detailed.


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