Clustering Enhanced Encoder–Decoder Approach to Dimensionality Reduction and Encryption

Abstract

Dimensionality reduction refers to reducing the number of attributes that are being considered, by producing a set of principal variables. It can be divided into feature selection and feature extraction. Dimensionality reduction serves as one of the preliminary challenges in storage management and is useful for effective transmission over the Internet. In this paper, we propose a deep learning approach using encoder–decoder networks for effective (almost-lossless) compression and encryption. The neural network essentially encrypts data into an encoded format which can only be decrypted using the corresponding decoders. Clustering is essential to reduce the variation in the dataset to ensure overfit. Using clustering resulted in a net gain of 1% over the standard encoder architecture over three MNIST datasets. The compression ratio achieved was 24.6:1. The usage of image datasets is for visualization only and the proposed pipeline could be applied for textual and visual data as well. © 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.