Title: A robust spread spectrum watermarking method using two levels DCT

Authors: Amir Hossein Taherinia, Mansour Jamzad

Addresses: Department of Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Azadi Ave, Tehran, Iran. ' Department of Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Azadi Ave, Tehran, Iran

Abstract: In this paper, a DCT-based blind watermarking scheme based on spread spectrum communications is proposed. We perform block-based DCT on the host image; then using the DC coefficients of each block, we construct a low-resolution approximation image. We apply block-based DCT on this approximation image, then watermark is embedded by adding a pseudo random noise sequence into its high frequencies. In detection stage, we extract the approximation image from the watermarked image, then the same pseudo random noise sequence is generated, and its correlation is computed with high frequencies of the watermarked approximation image. In our method, higher robustness is obtained because of embedding the watermark in low frequencies. In addition, higher imperceptibility is gained by scattering the watermark|s bit in different blocks. Compared with related works, our method proved to be highly resistant in cases of many common attacks, while preserving high PSNR for the watermarked images.

Keywords: blind digital watermarking; DCT; spread spectrum watermarking; copyright protection; digital multimedia data; spread spectrum communications; electronic security.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESDF.2009.027523

International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 2009 Vol.2 No.3, pp.280 - 305

Published online: 28 Jul 2009 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article