A hybrid OFDM–CDMA-based robust image watermarking technique

Abstract

Digital watermarking is a process of embedding hidden information called watermark into different kinds of media objects. It uses basic modulation, multiplexing and transform techniques of communication for hiding information. Traditional techniques used are least significant bit (LSB) modification, discrete cosine transform (DCT), discrete wavelet transform (DWT), discrete Fourier transform (DFT), code division multiple access (CDMA) or a combination of these. Among these, CDMA is the most robust against different attacks except geometric attacks. This paper proposes a blind and highly robust watermarking technique by utilizing the basis of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and CDMA communication system. In this scheme, the insertion process starts by taking DFT of host images, permuting the watermark bits in randomized manner and recording them in a seed as a key. Then PSK modulation follows inverse DFT (IDFT) that gives watermark information as OFDM symbols. These symbols are spread using spreading codes and then arithmetically added to the host image. Finally, scheme applies inverse DCT (IDCT) to get watermarked host images. The simulation results of the proposed scheme are compared with CDMA-based scheme in DCT domain. The results show that the robustness of the proposed scheme is higher than the existing scheme for non-geometric attacks.