AES as Error Correction: Cryptosystems for Reliable Communication

Abstract: In this paper, we show that the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) cryptosystem can be used as an error-correcting code to obtain reliability over noisy communication and data systems. Moreover, we characterize a family of computational cryptosystems that can potentially be used as well performing error correcting codes. In particular, we show that simple padding followed by a cryptosystem with uniform or pseudo-uniform outputs can approach the error-correcting performance of random codes. We empirically contrast the performance of the proposed approach using AES as error correction with that of Random Linear Codes and CA-Polar codes and show that in practical scenarios, they achieve almost the same performance. Finally, we present a modified counter mode of operation, named input plaintext counter mode, in order to utilize AES for multiple blocks while retaining its error correcting capabilities.