Optimal watermark embedding combining spread spectrum and quantization

Xin-Shan Zhu,Ting Yang,Ping Wang,Qing-Hao Meng,Biao Sun,Ya Sun

doi:10.1186/s13634-016-0373-8

Xin-Shan Zhu, Ting Yang + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s13634-016-0373-8

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Abstract

This paper presents an optimal watermark embedding method combining spread spectrum and quantization. In the method, the host signal vector is quantized to embed a multiple-bit watermark, and meanwhile, the quantized signal is made to locate in the detectable region defined in the context of spread spectrum watermarking. Under the two constraints, the optimal watermarked signal is derived in the sense of minimizing the embedding distortion. The proposed method is further implemented in wavelet transform domain, where the insensitive wavelet coefficients are selected according to the modified human visual model for watermark embedding. Simulations on real images by using the wavelet-based implementations demonstrate the proposed method performs very well in both watermark imperceptibility and robustness and is more robust to typical signal processes, e.g., additive noise, JPEG compression, etc., as compared with the state-of-the-art watermarking methods.

Highlights

The notable benefits of digital multimedia, ease of manipulation and transmission, put more and more heavy pressure on the copyright protection
According to Lemmas 1 and 2, we present the procedure for solving the minimization problem (6), which is shown in Algorithm 1
6 Conclusions In this paper, an optimal watermark embedding method has been developed by combining spread spectrum and quantization techniques with the embedding distortion minimized

Summary

Introduction

The notable benefits of digital multimedia, ease of manipulation and transmission, put more and more heavy pressure on the copyright protection. The basic idea of digital watermarking is to embed auxiliary information into multimedia data, such as image, audio, video, and text [1]. Robust watermarks are used for proof of ownership, while fragile watermarks are used to check the integrity and authenticity of digital contents [2, 3]. Most of existing watermarking schemes are designed for a single purpose by exploiting a single watermark. There has been recently increasing research interest in developing multiple watermark techniques to accomplish more than one purposes. In [2], the problem of embedding multiple watermarks was first discussed, and several typical application situations were presented

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