Data compression and encryption using cellular automata transforms

Abstract

A family of basis functions, generated from the evolving states of cellular automata (CA), is used to compress and encrypt data. The operations required in encoding and decoding the data are described under the umbrella cellular automata transforms (CAT). There is a huge number of these transform bases. CAT which can be used in the way other mathematical transforms (e.g. Fourier, Discrete Cosine, Laplace, Wavelet, etc.) are utilized. In data compression applications, the rules and pertinent keys used to generate the CA are selected in favour of those which yield basis functions with the best information packing characteristics. On the other hand, for encryption the selection is biased towards those with the tendency to yield an avalanche effect. In the latter case the transform process must be error free.