Hadamard Error-Correcting Codes and Their Application in Digital Watermarking.

Abstract

In communication technologies such as digital watermarking, wireless sensor networks (WSNs), and visual light communication (VLC), error-correcting codes are crucial. The Enhanced Hadamard Error-Correcting Code (EHC), which is based on 2D Hadamard Basis Images, is a novel error correction technique that is presented in this study. This technique is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the video watermarking scheme. Even with highly sophisticated embedding techniques, watermarks usually fail to resist such comprehensive attacks because of the extraordinarily high compression rate of approximately 1:200 that is frequently employed in video dissemination. It can only be used in conjunction with a sufficient error-correcting coding method. This study compares the efficacy of the well-known Reed-Solomon Code with this novel technique, the Enhanced Hadamard Error-Correcting Code (EHC), in maintaining watermarks in embedded videos. The main idea behind this newly created multidimensional Enhanced Hadamard Error-Correcting Code is to use a 1D Hadamard decoding approach on the 2D base pictures after they have been transformed into a collection of one-dimensional rows. Following that, the image is rebuilt, allowing for a more effective 2D decoding procedure. Using this technique, it is possible to exceed the theoretical error-correcting capacity threshold of ⌊dmin-12⌋ bits, where dmin is the Hamming distance. It may be possible to achieve better results by converting the 2D EHC into a 3D format. The new Enhanced Hadamard Code is used in a video watermarking coding scheme to show its viability and efficacy. The original video is broken down using a multi-level interframe wavelet transform during the video watermarking embedding process. Low-pass filtering is applied to the video stream in order to extract a certain frequency range. The watermark is subsequently incorporated using this filtered section. Either the Reed-Solomon Correcting Code or the Enhanced Hadamard Code is used to protect the watermarks. The experimental results show that EHC far outperforms the RS Code and is very resilient against severe MPEG compression.