Incorporation of perceptually adaptive QIM with singular value decomposition for blind audio watermarking

• Published in: EURASIP journal on advances in signal processing Vol. 2014; no. 1; pp. 1 - 12
• Main Authors: Hu, Hwai-Tsu, Chou, Hsien-Hsin, Yu, Chu, Hsu, Ling-Yuan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 28.01.2014; BioMed Central Ltd
• Subjects: Blinds; Decomposition; Digital signal processing; Engineering; Inclusions; Modulation; Quantization; Quantum Information Technology; Signal,Image and Speech Processing; Spintronics; Transformations; Watermarking; Adaptive quantization index modulation; Auditory masking threshold; Frame synchronization; Singular value decomposition; Discrete wavelet packet transform
• ISSN: 1687-6180; 1687-6172; 1687-6180
• DOI: 10.1186/1687-6180-2014-12

This paper presents a novel approach for blind audio watermarking. The proposed scheme utilizes the flexibility of discrete wavelet packet transformation (DWPT) to approximate the critical bands and adaptively determines suitable embedding strengths for carrying out quantization index modulation (QIM). The singular value decomposition (SVD) is employed to analyze the matrix formed by the DWPT coefficients and embed watermark bits by manipulating singular values subject to perceptual criteria. To achieve even better performance, two auxiliary enhancement measures are attached to the developed scheme. Performance evaluation and comparison are demonstrated with the presence of common digital signal processing attacks. Experimental results confirm that the combination of the DWPT, SVD, and adaptive QIM achieves imperceptible data hiding with satisfying robustness and payload capacity. Moreover, the inclusion of self-synchronization capability allows the developed watermarking system to withstand time-shifting and cropping attacks.