An acoustic data transmission system based on audio data hiding: method and performance evaluation

Abstract

Acoustic data transmission (ADT) forms a branch of the audio data hiding techniques with its capability of communicating data in short-range aerial space between a loudspeaker and a microphone. In this paper, we propose an acoustic data transmission system extending our previous studies and give an in-depth analysis of its performance. The proposed technique utilizes the phases of modulated complex lapped transform (MCLT) coefficients of the audio signal. To achieve a good trade-off between the audio quality and the data transmission performance, the enhanced segmental SNR adjustment (SSA) algorithm is proposed. Moreover, we also propose a scheme to use multiple microphones for ADT technique. This multi-microphone ADT technique further enhances the transmission performance while ensuring compatibility with the single microphone system. From a series of experimental results, it has been found that the transmission performance improves when the length of the MCLT frame gets longer at the cost of the audio quality degradation. In addition, a good trade-off between the audio quality and data transmission performance is achieved by means of SSA algorithm. The experimental results also reveal that the proposed multi-microphone method is useful in enhancing the transmission performance.