Enhancing the optimal robust watermarking algorithm to high payload

Digital watermarking is a robust method that allows a person to attach hidden data into the digital audio, video, or image signals and documents. In this paper, we propose a watermarking technique where initially, the watermark is embedded into the HL and LH frequency coefficients in multi-wavelet transform domain after searching the optimal locations in order to improve both quality of watermarked image and robustness of the watermark. Here, the payload along with robustness is improved using Genetic Algorithm (GA) and multi-bit embedding procedure. The experimentation is carried using the different images and the performance of the technique is analyzed using the Perceptual Quality-Dependent Parameter (PSNR) and NC. The proposed technique is evaluated using various compression standards and filtering techniques which yielded good results by having high PSNR and NC values showing the robustness and fidelity of the technique. The technique has achieved a peak PSNR of 38.14 and NC of 0.998. The technique is also compared to previous technique and results show that our proposed technique have performed better. Furthermore, payload analysis is carried out to infer that our proposed technique uses only half the payload when compared to previous technique.