Transparency and robustness are two conflicting requirements demanded by digital image watermarking for copyright protection and many other purposes. A feasible way to simultaneously satisfy the two conflicting requirements is to embed high-strength watermark signals in the host signals that can accommodate the distortion due to watermark insertion as part of perceptual redundancy. The search of distortion-tolerable host signals for watermark insertion and the determination of watermark strength are, hence, crucial to the realization of a transparent yet robust watermark. This paper presents a color image watermarking scheme that hides watermark signals in most distortion-tolerable signals within three color channels of the host image without resulting in perceivable distortion. The distortion-tolerable host signals or the signals that possess high perceptual redundancy are sought in the wavelet domain for watermark insertion. A visual model based upon the CIEDE2000 color difference equation is used to measure the perceptual redundancy inherent in each wavelet coefficient of the host image. By means of quantization index modulation, binary watermark signals are embedded in qualified wavelet coefficients. To reinforce the robustness, the watermark signals are repeated and permuted before embedding, and restored by the majority-vote decision making process in watermark extraction. Original images are not required in watermark extraction. Only a small amount of information including locations of qualified coefficients and the data associated with coefficient quantization is needed for watermark extraction. Experimental results show that the embedded watermark is transparent and quite robust in face of various attacks such as cropping, low-pass filtering, scaling, media filtering, white-noise addition as well as the JPEG and JPEG2000 coding at high compression ratios.

A Perceptually Tuned Watermarking Scheme for Color Images

Toward a new wavelet-based watermarking approach for color images using bio-inspired optimization principles

Region based QIM digital watermarking scheme for image database in DCT domain

This paper presents a new robust watermarking scheme for color image based on a block probability inspatial domain. A binary watermark image is permutated using sequence numbers generated by a secret key and Gray code, and then embedded four times in different positions by a secret key. Each bit of the binary encoded watermark is embedded by modifying the intensities of anon-overlapping block of 8*8 of the blue component ofthe host image. The extraction of the watermark is bycomparing the intensities of a block of 8*8 of the watermarked and the original images and calculating the probability of detecting '0' or '1'. Tested by benchmark Stirmark 4.0, the experimental results show that the proposed scheme is robust and secure against a widerange of image processing operations.

A New Robust Watermarking Scheme for Color Image in Spatial Domain

In this paper, a wavelet-based watermarking scheme for color images is proposed. The watermarking scheme is based on the design of a color visual model that is the modification of a perceptual model used in the image coding of gray scale images. The model is to estimate the noise detection threshold of each wavelet coefficient in luminance and chrominance components of color images in order to satisfy transparency and robustness required by the color image watermarking technique. The noise detection thresholds of coefficients in each color component are derived in a locally adaptive fashion based on the wavelet decomposition, by which perceptually significant coefficients are selected and a perceptually lossless quantization matrix is constructed for embedding watermarks. Performance in terms of robustness and transparency is obtained by embedding the maximum strength watermark while maintaining the perceptually lossless quality of the watermarked color image. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme is more robust than the existing scheme while retaining the watermark transparency.

Wavelet-based watermarking for color images through visual masking

Most colour watermarking methods are realised by modifying the image luminance or by processing each component of colour space separately This paper presents a novel and robust colour watermarking approach for applications in copy protection and digital archives The proposed scheme considers chrominance information that can be utilised at information embedding This work presents an approach for hiding the watermark into DC components of the colour image directly in the spatial domain, followed by a saturation adjustment technique performed in RGB space The merit of the proposed approach is that it not only provides promising watermarking performance but also is computationally efficient Experimental results demonstrate that this scheme successfully makes the watermark perceptually invisible and robust to image processing operations such as general image processing operations (JPEG2000, JPEG-loss compression, lowpass filtering, and medium filtering), image scaling and image cropping

Robust spatial watermarking technique for colour images via direct saturation adjustment

This paper examines aperture jitter of the sampling system and its effect on communication systems in the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and fading channels. Previous studies have claimed that AWGN power is directly proportional to the jitter noise power. We demonstrate that the aperture jitter can influence the input signal of a sampling system but is independent of AWGN. The noise power, due to the aperture jitter in a frequency-nonselective slowly fading channel, is shown to be a function of the input signal, the aperture jitter, and the channel envelope. The frequency-selective slowly fading channel involves another parameter analyzable paths. The effect of the aperture jitter on the bit-error probability (BEP) of a binary-phase-shift-keying digital communication system is also considered. The received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is calculated first, and its probability density function is derived. Then, the average BEP is evaluated as a function of SNR. Simulation results indicate that the aperture-jitter noise severely degrades the average BEP by reducing the received SNR. The results of this paper can be used in designing a wideband or radio-frequency-sampling digital communication system

Aperture Jitter of Sampling System in AWGN and Fading Channels

This work derives the average bit error rate (BER) of the uplink and downlink multicarrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) systems using maximum ratio combining (MRC) and equal gain combining (EGC) with synchronization errors over fading channels. The derived equation can simultaneously incorporate the parameters of the fading channel and all of the synchronization errors, including frequency offset, carrier phase jitter, and timing jitter. Numerical results indicate that those two combining schemes on the uplink and downlink MC-CDMA systems are degraded by all of the normalized synchronization errors over 10?2. The comparison outcomes between MRC and EGC reveal that the MRC generally outperforms EGC in the uplink MC-CDMA system. However, EGC achieves better performance when the number of users is small, the normalized synchronization errors are low and the signal to noise ratio (SNR) is high. In the downlink system, EGC mainly outperforms MRC when the SNR and the number of users are gradually increased and the normalized synchronization errors are low. Therefore, the selection of MRC or EGC depends on the SNR, the synchronization errors and the number of users in uplink and downlink MC-CDMA systems.

Ping Sheng Huang

Papers

Robust spatial watermarking technique for colour images via direct saturation adjustment

Aperture Jitter of Sampling System in AWGN and Fading Channels

Performance comparison of MRC and EGC on a MC-CDMA system with synchronization errors over fading channels