A family of new complex number chaotic maps based image encryption algorithm

•A family of maps is proved to be chaotic in the complex number field.•A pseudorandom keystream generator is constructed based on the chaotic maps family.•An image encryption algorithm is proposed based on the chaotic maps family.•The proposed complex chaotic maps have high complexity and the encryption algorithm has high security and speed.

A family of new complex number chaotic maps based image encryption algorithm is proposed in the paper. A family of maps is constructed and proved to be chaotic in the complex number field, and its characteristics are analyzed. Two maps are selected from the chaotic maps family and are utilized to construct pseudorandom keystream sequence. In the proposed encryption algorithm, the pseudorandom keystream sequences are used to scramble and diffuse the plain image data and two entropy coding methods are used to reduce the correlation among the signals. Both theoretical analysis and experimental tests show that the proposed algorithm is secure and efficient.