On key distribution management for conditional access system on pay-TV system

Author

Tu, Fu-Kuan ; Laih, Chi-Sung ; Tung, Hsu-Hung

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Nat. Cheng Kung Univ., Tainan, Taiwan

Volume

45

Issue

1

fYear

1999

fDate

2/1/1999 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

151

Lastpage

158

Abstract

A conditional access system (CAS) is essential in a pay-TV system to charge the subscriber the subscription fee, and key management is also important. Various levels of key hierarchy for a CAS are discussed and two methods of grouping the subscribers to reduce the complexity of key distributions are presented. Based on the proposed two grouping methods we proposed a simple and a complete scheme with four-levels of key hierarchy for the key distribution management CAS of the pay-TV system. We also analyze the performance of the proposed complete scheme. It is shown that our system is efficient and suitable for a pay-TV system which provides both pay per channel (PPC) and pay per view (PPV) services. Besides, the proposed complete scheme is also a flexible one for dynamic management. Finally, it should be noted that, though our discussion are focused on pay-TV only, our schemes are also suitable for a digital broadcasting system (DBS)

Keywords

cable television; cryptography; digital television; direct broadcasting by satellite; television broadcasting; DBS; PPC services; PPV services; conditional access system; cryptography; digital broadcasting system; key distribution management; key distributions; key hierarchy; pay per channel; pay per view; pay-TV system; performance analysis; subscribers grouping methods; Cable TV; Content addressable storage; Cryptography; Engineering management; Performance analysis; Satellite broadcasting; Security; Subscriptions; TV broadcasting; Watches;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Consumer Electronics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0098-3063

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/30.754430

Filename

754430