A fast reservoir computing based image encryption algorithm

Abstract

Reservoir computing has gained a lot of momentum in recent years, in part due to its high-speed performance. The algorithm presented here deliberately exploits this property for efficient encryption and decryption of image data. It is demonstrated that its performance is a factor of 1000 faster than another encryption algorithm based on reservoir computing. We further extend the presented method for applicability to high-resolution and color images by exploiting the computational speed of small reservoir networks and the property that reservoir computers are generally able to reproduce their training data with high accuracy. To that, security and performance aspects are discussed.