Error-Resilient Triple-Watermarking with Multiple Description Coding

Abstract

Watermarking is one useful solution for digital rights management (DRM) systems, and it is a popular research topic in the last decade. In this paper, besides the inherent behavior to conquer against intentional or unintentional attacks for watermarking, we not only watch the survivability of embedded watermark, but also focus on retaining the watermarked image quality with the aid of multiple description coding (MDC). MDC is a technique for error resilient coding, suitable for transmitting compressed data over multiple channels. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm on vector quantization (VQ) based image watermarking, which is suitable for error-resilient transmission. By incorporating watermarking with MDC, the scheme we proposed for embedding three watermarks can effectively overcome channel impairments while retaining the capability for ownership protection. With the promising simulation results presented, we can demonstrate the utility and practicability of our algorithm.