A robust audio watermarking scheme based on reduced singular value decomposition and distortion removal

This paper presents a blind audio watermarking algorithm based on the reduced singular value decomposition(RSVD). A new observation on one of the resulting unitary matrices is uncovered. The proposed scheme manipulates coefficients based on this observation in order to embed watermark bits. To preserve audio fidelity a threshold- based distortion control technique is applied and this is further supplemented by distortion suppression utilizing psychoacoustic principles. Test results on real music signals show that this watermarking scheme is in the range of imperceptibility for human hearing, is accurate and also robust against MP3 compression at various bit rates as well as other selected attacks. The data payload is comparatively high compared to existing audio watermarking schemes

New Digital Audio Watermarking Algorithms for Copyright Protection

This thesis investigates the development of digital audio watermarking in addressing issues such as copyright protection. Over the past two decades, many digital watermarking algorithms have been developed, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The main aim of this thesis was to develop a new watermarking algorithm within an existing Fast Fourier Transform framework. This resulted in the development of a Complex Spectrum Phase Evolution based watermarking algorithm. In this new implementation, the embedding positions were generated dynamically thereby rendering it more difficult for an attacker to remove, and watermark information was embedded by manipulation of the spectral components in the time domain thereby reducing any audible distortion. Further improvements were attained when the embedding criteria was based on bin location comparison instead of magnitude, thereby rendering it more robust against those attacks that interfere with the spectral magnitudes. However, it was discovered that this new audio watermarking algorithm has some disadvantages such as a relatively low capacity and a non-consistent robustness for different audio files. Therefore, a further aim of this thesis was to improve the algorithm from a different perspective. Improvements were investigated using an Singular Value Decomposition framework wherein a novel observation was discovered. Furthermore, a psychoacoustic model was incorporated to suppress any audible distortion. This resulted in a watermarking algorithm which achieved a higher capacity and a more consistent robustness. The overall result was that two new digital audio watermarking algorithms were developed which were complementary in their performance thereby opening more opportunities for further research

Proposta e avaliação de sistema de comunicação de informação escondida em propagandas sonoras

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia Elétrica, Florianópolis, 2014.Esta dissertação propõe um novo sistema de comunicação informado projetado para incorporar a informação escondida em anúncios de áudio. A informação é modulada e transmitida através de uma marca d'água em áudio digital incorporada ao sinal de áudio hospedeiro. A inserção de marca d'água é projetada para alcançar um impacto perceptual mínimo e alta robustez às distorções do ambiente, a fim de cumprir com a proposta de aplicação em marketing. A energia da incorporação está devidamente dimensionada para atingir a alta transparência. Novas técnicas de sincronização e de equalização adaptativa são investigadas e propostas para extrair as informações de forma confiável após as interferências do canal ambiente. Os resultados experimentais, utilizando canais ambientes simulados e reais, ilustram o desempenho do sistema proposto e os resultados estão em contraste a outras técnicas existentes. O objetivo deste trabalho é expor um sistema de marca d'água digital de áudio que integre em um sistema de comunicação informada escondida em propagandas sonoras, permitindo a utilização deste sistema em aplicações de marketing.This dissertation proposes a new informed communication system designed to embed information hidden into audio advertisements. The information is modulated and transmitted through a audio digital watermark embedded into the audio signal host. The watermark embedding is designed to achieve minimal perceptual impact and high robustness to environment distortions in order to comply with the proposed application in marketing. The embedding energy is properly scaled in order to achieve high transparency. Novel synchronization and adaptive equalization techniques are investigated and proposed to reliably extract the information after the channel interferences. Experimental results using simulated and real environment channels illustrate the performance of the proposed system and results are contrasted to other existing techniques

Improving Audio Watermark Robustness Using Stretched Patterns against Geometric Distortion

One of the problems for audio watermarks is robustness against signal processing causing de-synchronization of the pseudo-random sequences. To tackle the problem, we previously introduced an audio watermarking method using a two-dimensional pseudo-random array, which is robust against pitch shifting and random stretching to some extent. In this paper, we explain a modification to the detection algorithm to improve the robustness against excessive distortion. The method uses multiple pseudo-random arrays each of which is stretched assuming a certain amount of distortion. Since most of the detection process for the multiple arrays is shared, the additional computational cost is limited