The aim of this paper is to present a novel approach to the decoding and the detection of multibit, multiplicative, watermarks embedded in the frequency domain. Watermark payload is conveyed by amplitude modulating a pseudo-random sequence, thus resembling conventional DS spread spectrum techniques. As opposed to conventional communication systems, though, the watermark is embedded within the host DFT coefficients by using a multiplicative rule. The watermark decoding technique presented in the paper is an optimum one, in that it minimizes the bit error probability. The problem of watermark presence assessment, which is often underestimated by state-of-the-art research on multibit watermarking, is addressed too, and the optimum detection rule derived according to the Neyman-Pearson criterion. Experimental results are shown both to demonstrate the validity of the theoretical analysis and to highlight the good performance of the proposed system.

Date Published: 29 April 2002
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 4675, Security and Watermarking of Multimedia Contents IV, (29 April 2002); doi: 10.1117/12.465299

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4675:
Security and Watermarking of Multimedia Contents IV
Edward J. Delp; Ping Wah Wong, Editor(s)