Robust image-in-audio watermarking technique based on DCT-SVD transform

Abstract

In this paper, a robust and highly imperceptible audio watermarking technique is presented based on discrete cosine transform (DCT) and singular value decomposition (SVD). The low-frequency components of the audio signal have been selectively embedded with watermark image data making the watermarked audio highly imperceptible and robust. The imperceptibility of proposed methods is evaluated by computing signal-to-noise ratio and by conducting subjective listening tests. The robustness of proposed technique is evaluated by computing bit error rate and average information loss in retrieved watermark image subjected to MP3 compression, AWGN, re-sampling, re-quantization, amplitude scaling, low-pass filtering, and high-pass filtering attacks with high data payload of 6 kbps. The information-theoretic approach is used to model the proposed watermarking technique as discrete memoryless channel. The Shannon’s entropy concept is used to highlight the robustness of proposed technique by computing the information loss in retrieved watermarked image.