Robust and Blind Audio Watermarking Algorithm in Dual Domain for Overcoming Synchronization Attacks

Qiuling Wu,Aiyan Qu,Dandan Huang,Mohamed Shaat

doi:10.1155/2020/2035747

Abstract

How to effectively resist synchronization attacks is the most challenging topic in the research of robust watermarking algorithms. A robust and blind audio watermarking algorithm for overcoming synchronization attacks is proposed in dual domain by considering time domain and transform domain. Based on analysing the characteristics of synchronization attacks, an implicit synchronization mechanism (ISM) is developed in the time domain, which can effectively track the appropriate region for embedding and extracting watermarks. The data in this region will be subjected to discrete cosine transform (DCT) and singular value decomposition (SVD) in turn to obtain the eigenvalue that can be utilized to carry watermarks. In order to extract the watermark blindly, the eigenvalue will be quantized. Genetic algorithm (GA) is utilized to optimize the quantization step to balance both transparency and robustness. The experimental results confirm that the proposed algorithm not only withstands various conventional signal processing operations but also resists malicious synchronization attacks, such as time scale modification (TSM), pitch-shifting modification (PSM), jittering, and random cropping. Especially, it can overcome TSM with strength from −30% to +30%, which is much higher than the standard of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and far superior to the other algorithms in related papers.

Highlights

We propose an optimal audio watermarking algorithm using Genetic algorithm (GA) to further enhance the overall performance of this algorithm
In order to evaluate the performance of this proposed algorithm, the quality of the audio can be evaluated by three ways, including SNR, the object difference grade (ODG) which is one of the output values obtained from the perceptual evaluation of audio quality (PEAQ), and the mean opinion score (MOS)
It is found that the playing time of the audio will be longer or shorter after being attacked by time scale modification (TSM), but the shape of the voiced frame will not change basically. erefore, an implicit synchronization mechanism (ISM) which can search for the embedding region where the watermark is located is developed, in which it takes the sample point with the largest amplitude in the voiced frame as the synchronization mark

Summary

Introduction

We propose an optimal audio watermarking algorithm using GA to further enhance the overall performance of this algorithm This algorithm adopts several additional measures to improve the robustness, such as twice even segmentation to the audio, and the operation that embeds the same watermark into three voiced frames. E principle of the proposed audio watermarking algorithm will be elaborated, and this section will be divided into four subjects, including the embedding principle, the extracting principle, optimization of the quantization step, and the measure to further improve robustness.

ISM for Tracking Embedding Region

Principle of the Watermarking Algorithm

Performance Evaluation

Findings

Conclusions