Introducing a Novel Data Over Voice Technique for Secure Voice Communication

Abstract

The current increasing need for privacy-preserving voice communications is leading to new ideas for securing voice transmission. This paper refers to a relatively new concept of sending encrypted data or speech as pseudo-speech in the audio domain over existing voice communication infrastructures, like 3G cellular network and Voice over IP (VoIP). The distinctive characteristic of such a communication system is that it relies on the robust transmission of binary information in the form of audio signal. This work presents a novel Data over Voice (DoV) technique based on codebooks of short harmonic waveforms. The technique provides a sufficiently fast and reliable data rate over cellular networks and many VoIP applications. The new method relies on general principles of Linear Predictive Coding for voice compression (LPC voice coding) and is more versatile compared to solutions trained on exact channel models. The technique gives by design a high control over the desired rate of transmission and provides robustness to channel distortion. In addition, an efficient codebook design approach inspired by quaternary error correcting codes is proposed. The usability of the proposed DoV technique for secure voice communication over cellular networks and VoIP has been successfully validated by empirical experiments. The paper details the system parameters, putting a special emphasis on system's security and technical challenges.