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

Audio watermarking techniques using singular value decomposition

In an increasingly digital world, proving ownership of files is more and more difficult. For audio files, many schemes have been put into place to attempt to protect the rights of the digital content owners. In general, these techniques fall under the classification of Digital Rights Management (DRM). Audio watermarking is one of the less invasive schemes which embeds security into the data itself instead of in an outside layer meant to encapsulate and protect the data. There are many domains in which an audio watermark can be applied. The simplest is that of the time domain; often, however, other domains may be more desirable due to greater imperceptibility and robustness to attack. Common domains include the frequency domain, or domains similar to frequency through functions such as the Wavelet Transform. One domain of particular interest is that of the Singular Value Decomposition. The goal of this thesis is to propose and test many different watermarking schemes as well as test an existing watermarking scheme operating in the SVD domain in order to assess the viability of the SVD as a watermarking carrier domain. Different carrier matrices as well as bit embedding methods are explored. The use of a standard set of audio files was used to help test the systems; a standard set of watermarking tests was unavailable, so a comparable test bed was implemented and utilized

Digital audio watermarking for broadcast monitoring and content identification

Copyright legislation was prompted exactly 300 years ago by a desire to protect authors against exploitation of their work by others. With regard to modern content owners, Digital Rights Management (DRM) issues have become very important since the advent of the Internet. Piracy, or illegal copying, costs content owners billions of dollars every year. DRM is just one tool that can assist content owners in exercising their rights. Two categories of DRM technologies have evolved in digital signal processing recently, namely digital fingerprinting and digital watermarking. One area of Copyright that is consistently overlooked in DRM developments is 'Public Performance'. The research described in this thesis analysed the administration of public performance rights within the music industry in general, with specific focus on the collective rights and broadcasting sectors in Ireland. Limitations in the administration of artists' rights were identified. The impact of these limitations on the careers of developing artists was evaluated. A digital audio watermarking scheme is proposed that would meet the requirements of both the broadcast and collective rights sectors. The goal of the scheme is to embed a standard identifier within an audio signal via modification of its spectral properties in such a way that it would be robust and perceptually transparent. Modification of the audio signal spectrum was attempted in a variety of ways. A method based on a super-resolution frequency identification technique was found to be most effective. The watermarking scheme was evaluated for robustness and found to be extremely effective in recovering embedded watermarks in music signals using a semi-blind decoding process. The final digital audio watermarking algorithm proposed facilitates the development of other applications in the domain of broadcast monitoring for the purposes of equitable royalty distribution along with additional applications and extension to other domains

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

A new method to increase the capacity of audio steganography based on the LSB algorithm

Audio techniques have been developed for audio streaming on the internet. Using the TCP/IP protocol, audio file can be uploaded, downloaded, and transmitted through the internet. This benefit of transmission makes the interest in using audio as cover object in steganography become much stronger. Capacity which is one of the most important properties of audio steganographic methods, evaluates the amount of possible embedding data within the audio file. A new embedding technique of audio steganography is proposed to increase the carrier medium capacity for substitution additional hidden message. With respect to the performed tests, the algorithm succeeds to increase the depth of embedding layer, without having effects on the signal transparency. The maximum number of bits without significant effect on host audio signal for LSB audio steganography is 4 LSBs. The secret message bits are hidden into variable and multiple LSBs layer in this method. Experimental results show that the use of this new technique which apply 7 LSBs for data embedding in comparison the LSB standard algorithm with 4 LSBs improve data hiding capacity of carrier audio by 35% to 55%. It can be observed from listening tests that there is no significant difference between the stego audio acquired from the novel technique and the main signal