An adaptive and robust watermarking method based on VQ

Abstract

An adaptive and robust watermarking algorithm based on vector quantization (VQ) is presented in this paper. A binary watermark is adaptively embedded with the characteristics of the original source in the VQ domain, then the watermarked image along with a secret key are transmitted to the receiver for protecting the ownership. In extracting the watermark, we make use of the pre-registered secret key in addition to the watermarked image to examine whether the watermark could survive the intentional attacks or not. We performed a variety of attacks on the watermarked image, including the destruction attacks and the synchronization attacks, to show the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. After watermark extraction, we acquired the extracted watermark that is highly similar to the embedded one; in addition, the information conveyed therein is easily recognizable. Hence, the proposed algorithm is not only robust bust also useful for protecting the ownership of digital media.