Blind Audio Watermarking Research Articles

Hiding Full-Color Images into Audio with Visual Enhancement via Residual Networks

Watermarking is a viable approach for safeguarding the proprietary rights of digital media. This study introduces an innovative fast Fourier transform (FFT)-based phase modulation (PM) scheme that facilitates efficient and effective blind audio watermarking at a remarkable rate of 508.85 numeric values per second while still retaining the original quality. Such a payload capacity makes it possible to embed a full-color image of 64 × 64 pixels within an audio signal of just 24.15 s. To bolster the security of watermark images, we have also implemented the Arnold transform in conjunction with chaotic encryption. Our comprehensive analysis and evaluation confirm that the proposed FFT–PM scheme exhibits exceptional imperceptibility, rendering the hidden watermark virtually undetectable. Additionally, the FFT–PM scheme shows impressive robustness against common signal-processing attacks. To further enhance the visual rendition of the recovered color watermarks, we propose using residual neural networks to perform image denoising and super-resolution reconstruction after retrieving the watermarks. The utilization of the residual networks contributes to noticeable improvements in perceptual quality, resulting in higher levels of zero-normalized cross-correlation in cases where the watermarks are severely damaged.

Adaptive and blind audio watermarking algorithm based on dither modulation and butterfly optimization algorithm.

How to improve the robustness to resist attacks and how to adaptively match the key parameters of the watermarking algorithm with the performance requirements to achieve the best performance in different applications are two hot issues in the research of audio watermarking algorithms. An adaptive and blind audio watermarking algorithm based on dither modulation and butterfly optimization algorithm (BOA) is proposed. Based on the convolution operation, a stable feature is designed to carry the watermark, which will improve the robustness by means of the stability of this feature to prevent the watermark loss. Blind extraction will be achieved only by comparing the feature value and the quantized value without the original audio. The BOA is used to optimize the key parameters of the algorithm which can be matched with the performance requirements by coding the population and constructing the fitness function. Experimental results confirm that this proposed algorithm can adaptively search for the optimal key parameters that match the performance requirements. Compared with other related algorithms in recent years, it exhibits strong robustness against various signal processing attacks and synchronization attacks.

A blind audio watermarking based on singular value decomposition and quantization

A blind audio watermarking based on singular value decomposition and quantization

Robust audio watermarking scheme based on fractional Charlier moment transform and dual tree complex wavelet transform

The popular embedded watermarking method in transform domains such as DWT, LWT, DCT, and SVD achieves copyright protection of audio signals by embedding watermarks into the original audio signals. The main weaknesses of the existing methods include low payload and low robustness against common audio processing operations and attacks, especially, vulnerability to shifting attack. This paper proposes a new robust, secure, and blind audio watermarking scheme based on a novel hybrid transform which is a combination of the dual tree complex wavelet transform (DTCWT) and the fractional Charlier moment transform (FrCMT). After segmenting the original audio signal into several segments of the same length, the 3-level DTCWT is applied on each segment using filters designed specifically to have shift invariance, then FrCMT is applied on the approximation coefficients of DTCWT. Finally, a sequence of watermark bits is embedded in FrCMT coefficients by quantizing their relative energy. The fractional order in FrCMT is chosen in our scheme in a way to obtain high imperceptibility and robustness against most common audio processing operations and attacks. Moreover, it is used as a security key to ensure a high security level of the proposed scheme. The comparative analysis confirms the high robustness, security, and efficiency of the proposed watermarking method.

Robust and Blind Audio Watermarking Scheme Based on Genetic Algorithm in Dual Transform Domain

In order to protect the copyright of audio media in cyberspace, a robust and blind audio watermarking scheme based on the genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed in a dual transform domain. A formula for calculating the embedding depth is developed, and two embedding depths with different values are used to represent the “1” and “0” states of the binary watermark, respectively. In the extracting process, the embedding depth in each audio fragment will be calculated and compared with the average embedding depth to determine the watermark bit by bit, so this scheme can blindly extract the watermark without the original audio. GA will be applied to optimize the algorithm parameters for meeting the performance requirements in different applications. Besides, the embedding rule is further optimized to enhance the transparency based on the principle of minimal modification to the audio. Experimental results prove that the payload capacity reaches 172.27 bps, the bit error rate (BER) is 0.1% under the premise that its transparency is higher than 25 dB, and its robustness is strong against many attacks. Significantly, this scheme can adaptively select the algorithm parameters to satisfy the specific performance requirements.

BCH encoded robust and blind audio watermarking with tamper detection using hash

BCH encoded robust and blind audio watermarking with tamper detection using hash

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

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.

A blind watermark algorithm in SWT domain using bivariate generalized Gaussian distributions

Imperceptibility, robustness, and payload are three main requirements of any audio watermarking systems to guarantee desired functionalities, but there is a tradeoff among them from the information-theoretic perspective. Generally, in order to enhance the imperceptibility, robustness, and payload simultaneously, the human auditory system and the statistical properties of the audio signal should be fully taken into account. The statistical model based transform domain multiplicative watermarking scheme embodies the above ideas, and therefore the detection and extraction of the multiplicative watermarks have received a great deal of attention. Although much effort has been made in recent years, improving the ability of imperceptibility, watermark capacity, and robustness at the same time remains a challenge within the audio watermarking community. In this paper, we propose a blind audio watermark decoder in stationary wavelet transform domain based on bivariate generalized Gaussian distributions, wherein both the local statistical properties and inter-scale dependencies of the stationary wavelet transform coefficients of digital audio are taken into account, and also the adaptive nonlinear watermark embedding strength functions are designed. The results of our tests with different host audios, digital watermarks, and various attacks, we experimentally confirm that the proposed approach performs well compared to the state-of-the-art audio watermarking methods.

Frame-synchronous Blind Audio Watermarking for Tamper Proofing and Self-Recovery

This paper presents a lifting wavelet transform (LWT)-based blind audio watermarking scheme designed for tampering detection and self-recovery. Following 3-level LWT decomposition of a host audio, the coefficients in selected subbands are first partitioned into frames for watermarking. To suit different purposes of the watermarking applications, binary information is packed into two groups: frame-related data are embedded in the approximation subband using rational dither modulation; the source-channel coded bit sequence of the host audio is hidden inside the 2nd and 3rd -detail subbands using 2N-ary adaptive quantization index modulation. The frame-related data consists of a synchronization code used for frame alignment and a composite message gathered from four adjacent frames for content authentication. To endow the proposed watermarking scheme with a self-recovering capability, we resort to hashing comparison to identify tampered frames and adopt a Reed–Solomon code to correct symbol errors. The experiment results indicate that the proposed watermarking scheme can accurately locate and recover the tampered regions of the audio signal. The incorporation of the frame synchronization mechanism enables the proposed scheme to resist against cropping and replacement attacks, all of which were unsolvable by previous watermarking schemes. Furthermore, as revealed by the perceptual evaluation of audio quality measures, the quality degradation caused by watermark embedding is merely minor. With all the aforementioned merits, the proposed scheme can find various applications for ownership protection and content authentication.

Ternary coded melody as blind audio watermark

In this paper, we developed a new technique for blind embedding of ternary coded watermarks into audio files. Usage of ternary coding increases payload of the method that can be considered as an advantage against binary-coded watermarks. A well-known melody is presented as a sequence of ternary digits (trits) and is used as a watermark. This sequence is embedded into the time domain of a host audio file through amplitude modulation and B-splines. There is a version of that procedure where the clean copy of the container is necessary for extraction watermark [1]. In our approach, we exclude that container and convert the method into a blind one. The strong correlation between neighbor samples in the container is used to this end. A procedure based on neuron net is suggested for enhancement perception of ternary coded music. In this case, we exploit the correlation between samples in the watermark melody. It is supposed that a person checks the mark's existence, and he/she can recognize the melody even after significant distortions. The resistance of the technique to the most successful attacks is investigated. The paper is an extended version of the conference paper [1].

High-capacity and Transparent Digital Audio Watermarking using Rounding Reduced-arc MPSK and a Genetic Algorithm

In this paper, a novel, high-capacity and transparent blind audio watermarking system based on rounding reduced-arc M-ary phase shift keying (MPSK) is presented. Signal samples of the audio file are divided into several frames and then transformed into the frequency domain using fast Fourier transform. The watermark is embedded in the phase element of the selected samples based on several criteria. Two modified modulation schemes (256-PSK and binary phase shift keying) are used for the embedding process to compare the effects of the M-ary number used in the system. To improve the system, a genetic algorithm is utilized to obtain the best embedding parameters, which produces the optimal output based on the perceptual quality of the watermarked audio and the robustness of the extracted watermark. Experimental results show that the proposed audio watermarking system produces high-quality watermarked audio while loading a huge amount of data.

High-Performance Self-Synchronous Blind Audio Watermarking in a Unified FFT Framework

This paper presents a blind audio watermarking method that uses two different schemes to hide binary bits and auxiliary information within separate ranges of a fast Fourier transform (FFT) sequence. An adaptive vector norm modulation (AVNM) scheme is introduced to achieve a satisfactory balance of imperceptibility, robustness, and payload capacity. An improved spread spectrum (ISS) scheme is developed to produce a striking correlation peak, which facilitates the detection of synchronization codes in the FFT domain. The combination of robust audio segment extraction and recursive FFT makes it possible to execute these two FFT-based schemes in tandem on a sample-by-sample basis. The experiment results confirm that watermark embedding causes merely a negligible degradation in perceptual quality. A detectability test proved the effectiveness of the ISS scheme in self-synchronization as well as hiding auxiliary data. Three versions of AVNM with capacities ranging from 344.53 to 1033.59 bits per second were demonstrated. Compared with six recently developed schemes, AVNM exhibited advantages in terms of negligible quality distortion, flexible payload capacity, and excellent robustness against a variety of common signal processing attacks.

Hybrid Blind Audio Watermarking for Proprietary Protection, Tamper Proofing, and Self-Recovery

Hybrid Blind Audio Watermarking for Proprietary Protection, Tamper Proofing, and Self-Recovery

A Blind Audio Watermarking Scheme Employing DCT–HT–SD Technique

In this paper, a blind audio watermarking technique using discrete cosine transform (DCT), Hadamard transform (HT) and Schur decomposition (SD) is presented. The embedding of watermark is carried out by modifying the DCT coefficients through HT and SD. Watermark is embedded in the selected high-energy low-frequency frames of audio signal. The watermark bits are adaptively embedded in the unitary matrix obtained from SD. To make the proposed watermarking technique fully blind, embedding of watermark is performed by effectively utilizing the ratio between the first column elements of unitary matrix. Experimental results confirm that the proposed technique is robust to various signal processing attacks, such as re-sampling, re-quantization, noise addition, filtering, scaling and compression. The comparison of payload and robustness reveals that the proposed watermarking technique outperforms the existing techniques.

Adaptive and Blind Audio Watermarking Algorithm Based on Chaotic Encryption in Hybrid Domain

An adaptive and blind audio watermarking algorithm is proposed based on chaotic encryption in discrete cosine transform (DCT) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) hybrid domain. Since human ears are not sensitive to small changes in the high-frequency components of the audio media, the encrypted watermark can be embedded into the audio signal according to the special embedding rules. The embedding depth of each audio segment is controlled by the overall average amplitude to effectively improve the robustness and imperceptibility. The watermark is encrypted by a chaotic sequence to improve the security of watermark, so only users who hold the correct key can accurately extract the watermark without the original audio signal. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has larger capacity, higher imperceptibility, better security, and stronger robustness when combating against signal-processing attacks than the involved audio watermarking algorithms in recent years.

A blind audio watermarking technique based on a parametric quantization index modulation

In this paper, we propose an efficient transform-based blind audio watermarking technique by introducing a parametric quantization index modulation (QIM). Theoretical expressions for the signal to watermark ratio and probability of error are derived and then used in an optimization technique based on the Lagrange multipliers method to find the optimal values for the parameters of the parametric QIM that ensure the imperceptibility while maximizing the robustness under an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) attack. Moreover, a fast scheme for the implementation of the proposed watermarking technique is developed and an efficient procedure is suggested to find the interval for the best selection of the watermark embedding positions that provide a good trade-off between the effects of high and low pass filtering attacks. The parameters of the resulting optimal parametric QIM coupled with the embedding positions constitute a highly robust secret key for the proposed watermarking technique. We also carry out several experiments to show the usefulness of the theoretical analysis presented in the paper and compare the proposed technique with other existing QIM-based watermarking techniques by considering known attacks such as AWGN, re-quantization, resampling, low/high pass filtering, amplitude scaling and common lossy compressions.

SVD-Based Adaptive QIM Watermarking on Stereo Audio Signals

This paper proposes a blind digital audio water- marking algorithm that utilizes the quantization index modulation (QIM) and the singular value decomposition (SVD) of stereo audio signals. Conventional SVD-based blind audio watermarking algorithms lack physical interpretation since the matrix construction method for the input matrix for SVD is heuristically defined. However, in the proposed approach, because the SVD is directly applied to the stereo input signals, the resulting decomposed elements convey a conceptually meaningful inter- pretation of the original audio signal. As the proposed approach effectively utilizes the ratio of singular values, the embedded watermark is highly imperceptible and robust against volumetric scaling attacks; most QIM-based watermarking schemes are weak to these types of attacks. Experimental results under well-known practical attacks, such as compressions, resampling, and various types of signal processing, confirm that the proposed algorithm performs well compared to conventional audio watermarking algorithms.

Norm ratio-based audio watermarking scheme in DWT domain

In order to reach a balance between robustness, imperceptibility, and data payload, a novel blind audio watermarking scheme is proposed using the norm ratio of approximate coefficients in discrete wavelet domain (DWT). A chaotic sequence generated by Tent map is used to encrypt the watermark image and enhance the security of watermarking system. Firstly the original audio signal is segmented into non-overlapping frames and DWT is applied to each frame. Then, the approximate components are divided into two parts, and the norm ratio is calculated and modulated to embed the watermarks. Finally, the approximate components are scaled by optimizing the quality of the watermarked audio. Experimental results indicate that the proposed watermarking scheme is robust against different common attacks, such as noise addition, resampling, re-quantization, MP3 compression and amplitude scaling. The comparison analysis shows that the proposed scheme has high data payload and provides superior performance compared to the state-of-the-art watermarking schemes.

Blind Audio Watermarking in Transform Domain Based on Singular Value Decomposition and Exponential-Log Operations

Blind Audio Watermarking in Transform Domain Based on Singular Value Decomposition and Exponential-Log Operations

Efficient and robust frame-synchronized blind audio watermarking by featuring multilevel DWT and DCT

This paper presents a self-synchronizing blind audio watermarking method developed based on the distinctive features of multilevel discrete wavelet transform (MDWT) and discrete cosine transform (DCT). In the proposed design, the repetitive pattern hidden in the 11th approximation subband is used to control frame synchronization, and the wideband signal covering the first to ninth detail subbands is used to hide binary information. Tracing the zero-crossings across the extracted synchronous signal makes it possible to recalibrate frame positions and achieve synchronous watermarking on a rational dither modulation (RDM) framework. We also developed a windowed vector modulation (WVM) scheme suited for the time as well as DCT domain to enhance watermark imperceptivity. The proposed watermarking method currently achieves a payload capacity of 86 bits per second. The results of PEAQ testing confirm that the watermarked audio signal retains quality nearly indistinguishable from the original. Compared with two existing synchronized methods designed specifically to cope with playback speed modification, the proposed MDWT---DCT---RDM---WVM method demonstrates superior robustness to commonly encountered attacks. When encountering desynchronization attacks, such as cropping and resampling time-scale modification, the proposed technique is capable of retrieving the watermark bits with a high degree of accuracy.