Robustness improvement of known-host-state watermarking using host statistics

In this paper we consider 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 Compensated Dither Modulation methods from their robustness to these attacks point of view in terms of bit error rate probability. Motivated by the superior performance of the uniform deadzone quantizer over the uniform one in lossy source coding, we propose to replace the latter one by the former designed according to the statistics of the host data. Based on the suggested modifications we obtain analytical expressions for the bit error rate probability analysis of quantization-based watermarking methods in AWGN and uniform noise channels. Experimental results of computer simulations demonstrate significant performance enhancement of known-host-state watermarking techniques in comparison to the classically elaborated schemes.