A Privacy-preserving Image Retrieval Scheme in Edge Computing Environment

Abstract

Traditional cloud computing faces some challenges such as huge energy consumption, network delay and single point of failure. Edge computing is a typical distributed processing platform which includes multiple edge servers closer to the users, thus is more robust and can provide real-time computing services. Although outsourcing data to edge servers can bring great convenience, it also brings serious security threats. In order to provide image retrieval while ensuring users' data privacy, a privacy preserving image retrieval scheme in edge environment is proposed. Considering the distributed characteristics of edge computing environment and the requirement for lightweight computing, we present a privacy-preserving image retrieval scheme in edge computing environment, which two or more "honest but curious" servers retrieve the image quickly and accurately without divulging the image content. Compared with other traditional schemes, the scheme consumes less computing resources and has higher computing efficiency, which is more suitable for resource-constrained edge computing environment. Experimental results show the algorithm has high security, retrieval accuracy and efficiency.