Frequency Hopping Method for Audio Watermarking

Abstract

This paper evaluates the degradation of audio content for a perceptible removable watermark. Two different approaches to embedding the watermark in the spectral domain were investigated. The frequencies for watermark embedding are chosen according to a pseudorandom sequence making the methods robust. Consequentially, the lower quality audio can be used for promotional purposes. For a fee, the watermark can be removed with a secret watermarking key. Objective and subjective testing was conducted in order to measure degradation level for the watermarked music samples and to examine residual distortion for different parameters of the watermarking algorithm and different music genres.

Keywords

• Audio watermarking
• copyright protection
• frequency hopping method
• pseudo-random noise