<title>FEC and spread spectrum still image watermarking</title>

Abstract

The ability to resolve ownership disputes and copyright infringement is difficult in the worldwide digital age. There is an increasing need to develop techniques that adequately protect the owner of digital data. Digital Watermarking is a technique used to embed a known piece of digital data within another piece of digital data. The embedded piece of data acts as a fingerprint for the owner, allowing the protection of copyright, authentication of the data, and tracing of illegal copies. Digital Watermarking techniques have matured, and the most successful techniques are modeled after data communications techniques. In this case, the image is similar to the atmosphere (medium), and the watermark message is the signal communicated through the medium. Data communications techniques provide a sound model for measuring and improving watermark robustness. The goal of this project is to compare and measure the effectiveness of forward error correction (FEC) when used with a spread spectrum watermarking technique. This paper compares and contrasts Golay and convolutional error correction schemes. Most papers on digital watermarking mention or elude to the use of FEC, but none measure the effectiveness or offer a comparison of different techniques.