The recent advancements in the internet technology have created the urgency in developing critical data security framework around the globe. One of the most shared multimedia objects is the image which is safeguarded through a task called image encryption. An integrated approach to image encryption is the need of the hour which can combine algorithm and communication model. In this context, this work presents the first- of- its- kind approach addressing Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) to encrypt and decrypt the images to enhance their security during transmission via Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) communication systems. The uniqueness of this work is to combine the encryption scheme and subsequent wireless transmission. Modified Huffman coding has been employed to achieve compression. The viability of the proposed approach was tested and the performance metrics namely Entropy, PSNR, Histogram, correlation coefficient, differential attack, NIST test, and occulation attack analyses were evaluated. The simulation results prove the efficiency of the proposed integrated encryption – compression – communication schema.
