Robustness improvement of known-host-state data-hiding using host statistics

In this paper we considered the problem of performance improvement of known-host-state (quantization-based) watermarking methods undergo additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and uniform noise attacks. We question the optimality of uniform high rate quantizer based design of dither modulation and distortion compensate dither modulation methods from their robustness to these attacks point of view in terms of bit error rate probability. Motivated by superior performance of uniform deadzone quantizer over the uniform one in lossy source coding, we propose to replace the latter one by a former one designed according to the statistics of the host data. Based on suggested modifications we obtained analytical expressions for bit error rate probability analysis of quantization-based watermarking methods in AWGN and uniform noise channels. Experimental results of computer simulations demonstrated performance enhancement of known-host-state watermarking techniques in comparison to the classically elaborated schemes at negative watermark-to-noise ratios. r 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.