Robust coding of encrypted images via structural matrix

•This paper proposes a robust coder for encrypted images for the first time.•The proposed coder is an efficient multiple description coder with many descriptions.•The proposed coder can be applied to a particular application scenario.

In this work, we intend to design a robust coder, based on compressive sensing with structurally random matrix, for encrypted images over packet transmission networks. The proposed coder can be applied in the scenario that Alice needs a semi-trusted channel provider Charlie to encode and transmit the encrypted image to Bob. In particular, Alice first encrypts an image using globally random permutation and then sends the encrypted image to Charlie who samples the encrypted image using a structural matrix. Through an imperfect channel with packet loss, Bob receives the compressive measurements and reconstructs the original image by joint decryption and decoding. Experimental results show that the proposed coder can be considered as an efficient multiple description coder with a number of descriptions against packet loss.