SVD-Based Image Watermarking Using the Fast Walsh-Hadamard Transform, Key Mapping, and Coefficient Ordering for Ownership Protection

Abstract

Proof of ownership on multimedia data exposes users to significant threats due to a myriad of transmission channel attacks over distributed computing infrastructures. In order to address this problem, in this paper, an efficient blind symmetric image watermarking method using singular value decomposition (SVD) and the fast Walsh-Hadamard transform (FWHT) is proposed for ownership protection. Initially, Gaussian mapping is used to scramble the watermark image and secure the system against unauthorized detection. Then, FWHT with coefficient ordering is applied to the cover image. To make the embedding process robust and secure against severe attacks, two unique keys are generated from the singular values of the FWHT blocks of the cover image, which are kept by the owner only. Finally, the generated keys are used to extract the watermark and verify the ownership. The simulation result demonstrates that our proposed scheme is highly robust against numerous attacks. Furthermore, comparative analysis corroborates its superiority among other state-of-the-art methods. The NC of the proposed method is numerically one, and the PSNR resides from 49.78 to 52.64. In contrast, the NC of the state-of-the-art methods varies from 0.7991 to 0.9999, while the PSNR exists in the range between 39.4428 and 54.2599.