590 research outputs found
Spread spectrum-based video watermarking algorithms for copyright protection
Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/2263 on 14.03.2017 by CS (TIS)Digital technologies know an unprecedented expansion in the last years. The consumer can
now benefit from hardware and software which was considered state-of-the-art several years
ago. The advantages offered by the digital technologies are major but the same digital
technology opens the door for unlimited piracy. Copying an analogue VCR tape was certainly
possible and relatively easy, in spite of various forms of protection, but due to the analogue
environment, the subsequent copies had an inherent loss in quality. This was a natural way of
limiting the multiple copying of a video material. With digital technology, this barrier
disappears, being possible to make as many copies as desired, without any loss in quality
whatsoever. Digital watermarking is one of the best available tools for fighting this threat.
The aim of the present work was to develop a digital watermarking system compliant with the
recommendations drawn by the EBU, for video broadcast monitoring. Since the watermark
can be inserted in either spatial domain or transform domain, this aspect was investigated and
led to the conclusion that wavelet transform is one of the best solutions available. Since
watermarking is not an easy task, especially considering the robustness under various attacks
several techniques were employed in order to increase the capacity/robustness of the system:
spread-spectrum and modulation techniques to cast the watermark, powerful error correction
to protect the mark, human visual models to insert a robust mark and to ensure its invisibility.
The combination of these methods led to a major improvement, but yet the system wasn't
robust to several important geometrical attacks. In order to achieve this last milestone, the
system uses two distinct watermarks: a spatial domain reference watermark and the main
watermark embedded in the wavelet domain. By using this reference watermark and techniques
specific to image registration, the system is able to determine the parameters of the attack and
revert it. Once the attack was reverted, the main watermark is recovered. The final result is a
high capacity, blind DWr-based video watermarking system, robust to a wide range of attacks.BBC Research & Developmen
Audio Watermarking Scheme in MDCT Domain
In our proposed watermark embedding system, the original audio is segmented into overlapping frames. The psychoacoustic auditory model has been utilized to calculate the global threshold in modified discrete cosine transform domain. The perceptual insignificant locations have been used to insert the appropriately scaled watermark in the transform domain. Blind detection of watermark has been performed. Simulation results indicate that the proposed watermarking system is perceptually transparent and robust against various kind of attacks such as AWGN addition and MP3 compression
On the data hiding theory and multimedia content security applications
This dissertation is a comprehensive study of digital steganography for multimedia content protection. With the increasing development of Internet technology, protection and enforcement of multimedia property rights has become a great concern to multimedia authors and distributors. Watermarking technologies provide a possible solution for this problem.
The dissertation first briefly introduces the current watermarking schemes, including their applications in video,, image and audio. Most available embedding schemes are based on direct Spread Sequence (SS) modulation. A small value pseudo random signature sequence is embedded into the host signal and the information is extracted via correlation. The correlation detection problem is discussed at the beginning. It is concluded that the correlator is not optimum in oblivious detection. The Maximum Likelihood detector is derived and some feasible suboptimal detectors are also analyzed. Through the calculation of extraction Bit Error Rate (BER), it is revealed that the SS scheme is not very efficient due to its poor host noise suppression. The watermark domain selection problem is addressed subsequently. Some implications on hiding capacity and reliability are also studied. The last topic in SS modulation scheme is the sequence selection. The relationship between sequence bandwidth and synchronization requirement is detailed in the work. It is demonstrated that the white sequence commonly used in watermarking may not really boost watermark security.
To address the host noise suppression problem, the hidden communication is modeled as a general hypothesis testing problem and a set partitioning scheme is proposed. Simulation studies and mathematical analysis confirm that it outperforms the SS schemes in host noise suppression. The proposed scheme demonstrates improvement over the existing embedding schemes.
Data hiding in audio signals are explored next. The audio data hiding is believed a more challenging task due to the human sensitivity to audio artifacts and advanced feature of current compression techniques. The human psychoacoustic model and human music understanding are also covered in the work. Then as a typical audio perceptual compression scheme, the popular MP3 compression is visited in some length. Several schemes, amplitude modulation, phase modulation and noise substitution are presented together with some experimental results. As a case study, a music bitstream encryption scheme is proposed. In all these applications, human psychoacoustic model plays a very important role. A more advanced audio analysis model is introduced to reveal implications on music understanding. In the last part, conclusions and future research are presented
An Asymmetric Public Detection Watermarking Technique
International audienceThe new watermarking technique presented in this paper is an example of an asymmetric public detection scheme
Digital watermark technology in security applications
With the rising emphasis on security and the number of fraud related crimes
around the world, authorities are looking for new technologies to tighten
security of identity. Among many modern electronic technologies, digital
watermarking has unique advantages to enhance the document authenticity.
At the current status of the development, digital watermarking technologies
are not as matured as other competing technologies to support identity authentication
systems. This work presents improvements in performance of
two classes of digital watermarking techniques and investigates the issue of
watermark synchronisation.
Optimal performance can be obtained if the spreading sequences are designed
to be orthogonal to the cover vector. In this thesis, two classes of
orthogonalisation methods that generate binary sequences quasi-orthogonal
to the cover vector are presented. One method, namely "Sorting and Cancelling"
generates sequences that have a high level of orthogonality to the
cover vector. The Hadamard Matrix based orthogonalisation method, namely
"Hadamard Matrix Search" is able to realise overlapped embedding, thus the
watermarking capacity and image fidelity can be improved compared to using
short watermark sequences. The results are compared with traditional
pseudo-randomly generated binary sequences. The advantages of both classes
of orthogonalisation inethods are significant.
Another watermarking method that is introduced in the thesis is based
on writing-on-dirty-paper theory. The method is presented with biorthogonal
codes that have the best robustness. The advantage and trade-offs of
using biorthogonal codes with this watermark coding methods are analysed
comprehensively. The comparisons between orthogonal and non-orthogonal
codes that are used in this watermarking method are also made. It is found
that fidelity and robustness are contradictory and it is not possible to optimise
them simultaneously.
Comparisons are also made between all proposed methods. The comparisons
are focused on three major performance criteria, fidelity, capacity and
robustness. aom two different viewpoints, conclusions are not the same. For
fidelity-centric viewpoint, the dirty-paper coding methods using biorthogonal
codes has very strong advantage to preserve image fidelity and the advantage
of capacity performance is also significant. However, from the power
ratio point of view, the orthogonalisation methods demonstrate significant
advantage on capacity and robustness. The conclusions are contradictory
but together, they summarise the performance generated by different design
considerations.
The synchronisation of watermark is firstly provided by high contrast
frames around the watermarked image. The edge detection filters are used
to detect the high contrast borders of the captured image. By scanning
the pixels from the border to the centre, the locations of detected edges
are stored. The optimal linear regression algorithm is used to estimate the
watermarked image frames. Estimation of the regression function provides
rotation angle as the slope of the rotated frames. The scaling is corrected by
re-sampling the upright image to the original size. A theoretically studied
method that is able to synchronise captured image to sub-pixel level accuracy
is also presented. By using invariant transforms and the "symmetric
phase only matched filter" the captured image can be corrected accurately
to original geometric size. The method uses repeating watermarks to form an
array in the spatial domain of the watermarked image and the the array that
the locations of its elements can reveal information of rotation, translation
and scaling with two filtering processes
Spread Spectrum Based High Embedding Capacity Watermarking Method for Audio Signals
Audio watermarking is a promising technology for copyright protection of audio data. Built upon the concept of spread spectrum (SS), many SS-based audio watermarking methods have been developed, where a pseudonoise (PN) sequence is usually used to introduce security. A major drawback of the existing SS-based audio watermarking methods is their low embedding capacity. In this paper, we propose a new SS-based audio watermarking method which possesses much higher embedding capacity while ensuring satisfactory imperceptibility and robustness. The high embedding capacity is achieved through a set of mechanisms: embedding multiple watermark bits in one audio segment, reducing host signal interference on watermark extraction, and adaptively adjusting PN sequence amplitude in watermark embedding based on the property of audio segments. The effectiveness of the proposed audio watermarking method is demonstrated by simulation examples
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