Information Hiding Method Using Best DCT and Wavelet Coefficients and ItsWatermark Competition

Abstract

In recent years, information hiding and its evaluation criteria have been developed by the IHC (Information Hiding and its Criteria) Committee of Japan. This committee was established in 2011 with the aim of establishing standard evaluation criteria for robust watermarks. In this study, we developed an information hiding method that satisfies the IHC evaluation criteria. The proposed method uses the difference of the frequency coefficients derived from a discrete cosine transform or a discrete wavelet transform. The algorithm employs a statistical analysis to find the best positions in the frequency domains for watermark insertion. In particular, we use the BCH (Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem) (511,31,109) code to error correct the watermark bits and the BCH (63,16,11) code as the sync signal to withstand JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) compression and cropping attacks. Our experimental results showed that there were no errors in 10 HDTV-size areas after the second decompression. It should be noted that after the second compression, the file size should be less than 1 25 of the original size to satisfy the IHC evaluation criteria.

Keywords

• BCH code
• IHC evaluation criteria
• information hiding
• watermark competition