IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS FOR VIDEO TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 20, NO.
2, FEBRUARY 2010 317
Chaotic Scan: A Low Complexity Video
Transmission System
for Efficiently Sending Relevant Image Features
Radu Dogaru, Member, IEEE, Ioana Dogaru, and Hyongsuk Kim, Member, IEEE
Abstract—A novel image scanning and transmission system is
proposed, where the traditional raster scan is replaced with a
new one, called a chaotic scan. The result is a low complexity
image transmission system with encryption and spread spectrum
capabilities well suited for compressed sensing applications. Due
to the uncorrelated nature of the consecutively scanned pixels,
it allows a form of progressive compression and fast discovery
of the relevant image features using only a small fraction of the
transmitted pixels. The key ingredient of the proposed system
is a chaotic counter addressing the sensor array, based on a
cellular automaton exhibiting a pseudo-random chaotic behavior
and binary synchronization property.
Index Terms—Cellular automata, chaos synchronization, image
compression, image scan, image sensor, nonlinear dynamics.
I. Introduction
Images are important sources of information based on
which humans or robots may take different decisions. Un-
manned aerial vehicles, remote surveillance systems, and other
emergent sensor network applications require energy saving
sensing capabilities. In [1], a complementary metal–oxide–
semiconductor active pixel sensor is reported to consume
only 550 µW while just a few mW are sufficient to send
information over a short-distance wireless link. It is reasonable
to estimate that the power consumption of the sensor is in
a direct relation to the pixel rate (pixels being addressed
and sent per second). Reducing the amount of energy at the
sensor level while allowing for flexible operation, adapted
to the informational content of the scene, is of paramount
importance. In [2], conditional replenishment is proposed.
Some unconventional scanning methods [3], most based on
Manuscript received August 22, 2008; revised April 5, 2009. First version
published September 1, 2009; current version published February 5, 2010. The
work of R. Dogaru was supported by Chonbuk National University, Jeonju,
Korea, under the Foreign Professors Invitation Program of the Institute of
Information Technology Assessment. Additional support was provided by the
Ministry of Information and Communication, Korea, under the IT Foreign
Specialist Inviting Program supervised by the Institute of Information Tech-
nology Advancement, Project C1012-0000-0000, and by the Research Grant
ADBIOSONAR 12079/2008, CNMP, Romania. This paper was recommended
by Associate Editor H. Chen.
R. Dogaru and I. Dogaru are with the Department of Applied Electronics
and Information Engineering, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Bucharest
061071, Romania (e-mail: radu d@ieee.org; ioana d70@yahoo.com).
H. Kim is with the Division of Electronics and Information Engi-
neering, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju 561-756, Korea (e-mail:
hskim@chonbuk.ac.kr).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCSVT.2009.2031514
1051-8215/$26.00

c 2010 IEEE
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variations of Morton’s scan [4], are also credited for improve-
ments in terms of power consumption and sensor complexity
[5], [6]. In [7], a very similar approach is reported for the task
of de-correlating pixels in a neighborhood. None of the above
solutions consider the important issue of wireless transmission
and synchronization.
In this letter, we show that by simply replacing the tra-
ditional raster scan of a sensor array with a chaotic scan
having synchronization capabilities, results in multiple benefits
in terms of compression, encryption, and fast feature extraction
without adding complexity to the sensor circuitry. These
benefits are the effect of sending consecutively uncorrelated
pixels instead of correlated pixels as in the case of the raster
scan. The proposed chaotic scan is a very simplified model of
eye saccades where chaotic nonlinear dynamics is exploited to
scan the visual field. Unlike previous implementations of sac-
cadic sensors (e.g., in [8]) the resulting sensor is not a foveated
one, and therefore no sophisticated control mechanisms of the
motion as described in [9], [10], or [11] are implemented.
Although chaos synchronization was widely investigated so far
[12], there is a lack of applications, due to the low immunity to
noise of the typical systems. However, in this letter we employ
as chaotic counters a new class of systems called hybrid
cellular automata (HCA). They were recently introduced and
investigated [13]–[15] and offer both robust synchronization
and good chaotic counting properties. The remainder of this
letter is organized as follows: in Section II chaotic counters
and their properties will be introduced. The model of the
proposed video transmission system will be introduced and
analyzed in Section III as well as its features compared to
traditional scanning systems. Simulation results for various
circumstances of using the proposed system are provided in
Section IV.
II. Scan Counters and Their Properties
A. Scan Counters
A counting automaton is a binary automaton with the
property that in consecutive time steps it runs on a finite cycle
C defined by a set of N binary states: C = {X1 , X2 , ..., XN }.
Any counter state “i” represents a pixel address and it is
a binary vector Xi = [x1i , x2i , .., xji ., xni ] with n elements xji ∈
{0, 1}, where n represents the counter size. A perfect scanning
counter should count all N = 2n possible states corresponding
 318 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS FOR VIDEO TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2010
Fig. 1. Two types of chaotic counters and their properties. While both
have similar properties of the generated pseudo-random sequence, they have
different synchronization properties. The autonomous (A) mode is used in the
sensor (transmitter) while the synchronous (S) mode is used in the receiver.
to the same number of pixels in the array.
In the following, we will emphasize on chaotic counters
such as the linear feedback shift register (LFSR) [16] and the
HCA. The schematic diagram of both counters is provided in
Fig. 1.
The issue of LFSR secure synchronization in communi-
cations is usually addressed using computationally intensive
correlation schemes. Recently a new approach employing
chaotic nonlinear dynamics has been reported [17], [18], but
still requires the implementation of a specially designed analog
system in the receiver.
It has recently been shown [15] that HCA with rule
ID = 101 according to Wolfram’s notation [19] is a better
replacement for LFSR, providing in addition binary and secure
synchronization.
The discrete-time dynamics of the HCA is given by the
next equation, which applies synchronously to all cells (a cell
is identified by an index i ∈ {1, 2, ..., n})

T 
xiT (t + 1) = mi ⊕ Cell xj−1 (t) , xiT (t), xi+1
T
(t), ID (1)
where the upper index “T” stands for the transmitting CA
counter (i.e., embedded within the sensor in the proposed
transmission system), ⊕ is the logical XOR operator and
Cell (u1, u2, u3, ID) is a Boolean function with three binary
inputs (u1, u2, and u3). In its binary representation, the most
significant bit of ID corresponds to the cell output when
[u3, u2, u1] = [1, 1, 1]. A periodic boundary condition is
assumed, i.e., the leftmost cell (i = 1) is connected to the right-
most one (i = n). The binary mask vector m = [m1 , m2 , ..., mn ]
is optimized [26] for any odd counter size up to n ≤ 29
an optimal value of such that r = N/2n → 1 (maximal
cycle length). In the case n = 21 the optimal mask vector
is [10 100 000 010]. For this mask N = 2 097 151 = 221 − 1
states, i.e., only one pixel of the array is not addressed.
1) Chaotic Versus Raster Scan Counters: To understand
the basic difference between chaotic and raster scan counters
an array of N = 30 pixels addressed by the two possible
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Fig. 2. (a) Circular state diagrams for a normal (raster scan) counter.
(b) Same diagram for a chaotic counter, here the HCA with ID = 101 and
n = 5. (c) Distribution of distances between consecutive pixels in the case of
both chaotic counters with n = 17 cells.
counters is considered in Fig. 2. In the case of the raster
scan [Fig. 2(a)], consecutive states correspond to adjacent
pixels, while in the case of a chaotic counter consecutive states
correspond to rather distant pixels.
For a Gray code encoding the geometrical distance
n  ik 
between consecutively visited pixels is: dk (ik , ik−1 ) =
ik−1 
j=1 xj − xj . This distance is constant (dk = 1) for the
raster counter while it obeys a Gaussian distribution with
an average value d̄k = 0.5n in the case of chaotic (pseudo-
random) counters [Fig 2(c)]. The average distance between
consecutive pixels (“jump”) called in the next spreading is
large [see Fig. 2(b)] in the case of chaotic counters allowing
a fast coverage of the visual field.
B. Properties of Chaotic Counters: Fast Coverage
Let assume that the initial state of a scan is i = 1 in Fig. 2.
Let now consider a compact object (its pixels are correlated)
starting with position (state) m in the counting cycle [Fig. 2(a),
(b)]. The time until discovery Tdisc is defined as the average
number of iterations until reaching at least one pixel of the
object. With the constant “jump” of 1 in the case of the normal
counter and with the average “jump” of 0.5n in the case of
the chaotic counter, it follows that
Tdisc (m) = m (2a)
in the case of the normal (raster scan) counter, and
Tdisc (m) = m/ (0.5n) = 2m/n (2b)
in the case of chaotic counter. Obviously, the chaotic scan is
much faster than the raster scan in exploring the visual field.
It follows that a chaotic counter explores the entire pixel
array (m = N) after only Tcoverage = 2N/n cycles. This
observation leads to a very simple (e.g., compared with [20])
algorithm of progressive image compression [21] trading the
resolution and quality of the reconstructed image for the
compression rate.
For each pixel addressed by the chaotic counter at position
m in the transmitter (sensor) the receiver recovers an entire
block of identical pixels, starting with the same position m.
The resolution of the block L is controlled at the receiver to
optimize the efficiency of the compression scheme. In the limit
L = 1, a transmission with no loss is obtained as in the case
of the raster scan. But choosing a progressive decreasing of
 DOGARU et al.: CHAOTIC SCAN: A LOW COMPLEXITY VIDEO TRANSMISSION SYSTEM FOR EFFICIENTLY SENDING RELEVANT IMAGE FEATURES 319

Fig. 3. Progressive compression scheme using large reconstruction blocks

(small resolution) in the beginning and a higher resolution at the end
Fig. 4. Video transmission system where both the sensor (Tx) and the
of the transmission. The distortion curve is also given. The block size
receiver employ HCA chaotic counters with binary synchronization properties.
(L) is progressively decreased according to the following algorithm: It is
The receiver fills all pixels within a block of size L × L with the uniquely
dividedwith 2 when the counter clock reaches the next number from the
received pixel value.
series: 22 , 24 , 26 , 28 , 210 , 212 , 214 , 216 . Initially L is as large as the whole
image.
TABLE I
List of Relevant Features of the Chaotic Scan (CS) Compared
L one may achieve lossy compression. More details are given to the Traditional Raster Scan (RS)
in [21].
Note than no additional circuitry is required in the transmit- No Features CS RS
ter to achieve compression. In terms of peak signal-to-noise 1 Embedded image compression YES NO
ratio the performance is perceptually reasonable, as seen in 2 Embedded encryption capabilities YES NO
Fig. 3 for a 512 × 512-sized image. 3 Spread spectrum transmission YES NO
For video transmissions the most important consequence of (un-correlated consecutive pixels)
4 Fast feature detection capabilities YES NO
fast coverage property is the possibility of flexibly adapting the
5 Focus capability YES YES
transmission rate to the image content, with a very low rate (reduced)
for a still scene or as large as needed for a given accuracy, in
the case of motion.
Demodulation
x1r (t) = sign (r (t)) (7)
III. The Video Transmission System

 
A. The Structure of the Chaotic Scan Transmission System p (t) = 2 r(t) − x1r (t) . (8)
The principle of a video transmission system based on In the above, it is assumed that the pixel message p (t) =
chaotic scan is depicted in Fig. 4. The transmitter (Tx) p [l(t), c(t)], addressed at row l(t) and column c(t) by the
includes the sensor array addressed by the chaotic counter scanning counter, ranges within [−1, 1].
given by (1). The receiver (Rx) synchronizes its binary state Due to the mixing in (5) the synchronization is lost only
xr = [x1r , x2r , .., xnr ] to that of the transmitter based on the when SNR < 10 dB. The average number of clock periods to
recovered synchronization signal in (3). The dynamics of the regain synchronization was experimentally determined to be
Rx HCA is given by proportional to n2.5 .

T In addition to the system depicted in Fig. 4, a low capacity
x1r (t) = x 1 (t) = sign (s(t) + n(t)) (3)
feedback transmission channel may be considered to increase

r  flexibility. Simple commands to load the focus registers and
xir (t + 1) = mi ⊕ Cell xi−1 (t) , xir (t), xi+1
r
(t) , ID (4)
to increase or decrease the transmission rate can be provided
for i = 2, ..., n through this channel.
The equations describing the modulation and demodulation
process in the case of the simple additive mixing scheme B. Features of the Chaotic Scan Transmission System
(cryptographic properties require that the receiver knows the The main features of the chaotic scan transmission system
mask vector and the HCA ID rule) are given next are summarized in Table I, against the traditional raster scan
Modulation system.
In making this comparison the low circuit implementation
s (t) = 21 p(t) + x1T (t) . (5) complexity of the transmitting system is emphasized. The
circuitry needed to implement the chaotic counter (about
Channel noise (AGWN)
1.15 times more complex than the raster counter) with O(n)
r(t) = s(t) + n(t). (6) complexity represent a tiny part of the sensing circuitry with

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 320 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS FOR VIDEO TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2010

Fig. 5. Histograms of Lena image obtained after different numbers m of

pixels being sent and received when the sensor array is addressed using a
chaotic counter. Note the good match with the final histogram after sending
only 0.2% of all pixels.

Fig. 7. Consecutive snapshots from received video of a moving object.

Chaotic scan is employed in the sensor with a pixel rate corresponding to
a compression of ten times.

Fig. 6. Histograms of Lena image obtained after different numbers m of

pixels being sent and received when the sensor array is addressed using a
raster counter. In this case there are large differences in histograms and one
should wait for an entire frame in order to recover a valid histogram.

O(2n ) complexity. The complexity of the receiver is consid-

ered not relevant since it is usually implemented on a high
performance remote computer.
Detailed explanation for each feature in the above table
follows.
1) Feature 1: While in the case of raster scan additional
circuitry is needed to provide any form of compression,
no such circuitry is needed in the transmitter using
chaotic scan, as indicated in the progressive compression
detailed in Fig. 3 of Section II-B.
2) Feature 2: Encryption is performed without additional
circuitry as an effect of the chaotic counting process.
The key is embedded in the mask vector of the chaotic
counter and in the HCA rule.
3) Feature 3: Consecutive pixels addressed by chaotic
counters are located at distant geometrical locations,
as discussed in Section II-B, and can be considered
uncorrelated. Consequently, the transmitted signal is a
spread spectrum one.
4) Feature 4 (main feature): As detailed in Section II-B,
chaotic counters scan the visual field faster than raster
counters. In effect, various features (e.g., histograms)
or motion in the visual field can be detected faster,
based on a small fraction of pixels from the sensing
array. An example is given in Figs. 5 and 6. With
chaotic scan it is obvious that even after sending a
small number of pixels (less than 0.2% of the whole
image) a histogram approximating quite well the one
of the entire image is obtained. In the case of the
raster scan, as seen in Fig. 6, recovering the histogram
of the whole image after sending only a small frac-
tion of highly correlated pixels is not possible. Such
a feature is favorable to those applications where the
exact content of the image is less important than his-
Fig. 8. Consecutive snapshots from the received video of a moving object.
Chaotic scan is employed in the sensor with an increased pixel rate (ten times
more than in Fig. 7) to allow better tracking of the moving object.
tograms (e.g., feature recognition, detecting transitions
in video scene, motion detection, and so on.). It is
interesting to note that the histograms received from
a chaotic scan do not depend on the synchronization
process.
5) Feature 5: This feature reveals the only drawback of
the chaotic scan, but only when the least significant
p < n bits of the counter are used to focus on a
reduced zone (the most significant bits specify the zone).
Experimentally, it was found that k2p clock cycles are
needed (with k = 6 instead of k = 1 in the case of raster
scan) to address all pixels in a zone. This drawback
may be alleviated by taking k = 1 and using pixel
reconstruction in the receiver or by further research to
define better chaotic counters.
IV. Simulation Results
In the following simulations, a 320 × 240 pixels web-cam
(set at 30 frames/s) was used as a video image source. Both
chaotic and raster scan were implemented and the images were
processed in real time. For each new frame received from the

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 DOGARU et al.: CHAOTIC SCAN: A LOW COMPLEXITY VIDEO TRANSMISSION SYSTEM FOR EFFICIENTLY SENDING RELEVANT IMAGE FEATURES
Fig. 9. Raster scan used to recover fast motion of an object. Observe
distortions in the shape of the object due to the frame-oriented scanning.
camera the scanning counter advances addressing and sending
NCr pixels, where Cr is the compression ratio and N is the
total number of pixels. The highest resolution (L = 1) is as-
sumed at the receiver. In the first experiment, Cr = 0.1 and the
camera was aimed to a still scene. A pen is balanced in front
of the camera with a period of about 0.1 second. A sequence
of four consecutive frames in the receiver is represented in
Fig. 7. While all still parts of the visual field are recovered at
full resolution, some scattered pixels indicating the presence
of a new object appear on most positions occluded by the
moving pen. In the receiver, a specialized algorithm may
detect the presence of motion and inform the sensor array
to increase the pixel rate. Consequently, we choose Cr = 1
in the next experiment (pixel rate ten times larger). From the
four consecutive snapshots in Fig. 8, it is obvious that now all
the details of the moving object are revealed. In fact, since our
counter is capable to count all but one pixel in a webcam frame
the whole sensor information is recovered in the receiver. It is
interesting to compare the result in Fig. 7 with the raster scan
under the same operating conditions (Cr = 0.1). As seen in
Fig. 9, the raster scan at low pixel rates abruptly distorts the
shape of the moving object and this is the reason why a certain
frame rate is standardized to cope with fastest movements in
a scene.
V. Conclusion
A novel method for video image transmission and com-
pression was proposed, based on the observation that natural
systems explore the visual field chaotically to rapidly dis-
cover and focus on novel relevant patterns. The basis of this
new method is the replacement of the raster scan counters
with chaotic counters having synchronization property. This
replacement does not increase the circuit complexity of the
transmitting sensor and in addition provides several useful
features including fast pattern recognition from histograms and
useful communication features such as compression, spread
spectrum and cryptographic protection. Since relevant features
can be extracted without waiting for the entire frame to be
scanned, the chaotic scan eliminates the notion of “frame” and
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321
its associated latency (frame rate) allowing a flexible operation
of the sensor with a variable pixel rate. For still images, the
chaotic scan provides a very simple and effective progressive
image compression method.
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