This letter presents a new blind audio watermarking scheme using eigenvalue decomposition (EVD). Initially, the original audio is divided into frames and the samples of each frame are arranged into a square matrix. EVD is applied to each of these matrices. Watermark data is embedded into the largest eigenvalue of each diagonal matrix by quantization. Data embedding rate of the proposed scheme is 172.39bps. Simulation results confirm the imperceptibility of the proposed scheme and its higher robustness against various attacks compared to the state-of-the-art watermarking methods available in the literature.

In recent years, Ethernet fabrics have been developed with a view to using resources efficiently and simplifying the operation of data center networks. With Ethernet fabrics, frames are forwarded along the shortest paths based on routing tables without blocking ports. Ethernet fabrics are expected to be employed in more general networks including carrier access networks. In particular, the use of shortest path bridging MAC (SPBM) is expected to allow smooth migration from existing networks. With SPBM, networks can be flexibly constructed on demand in any network topology. If an arbitrary topology is constructed, traffic paths can overlap on specific links and throughput unfairness occurs. However, it is difficult to achieve accurate weighted fairness with existing schemes. This paper proposes employing weighted N rate N+1 color marking (WNRN+1CM) in SPBM networks to achieve per-flow weighted fairness. WNRN+1CM was developed to realize weighted fairness in layer-2 ring networks and the applicability to other network topologies has not yet been discussed. The outline of WNRN+1CM in SPBM is as follows. The weight and the maximum rate are provided for each flow at edge bridges. When edge bridges receive frames from outside the SPBM domain, they assign colors to frames according to the input rate and the weight of each flow. The color indicates the dropping priority. If the input rate exceeds the maximum rate, frames are discarded to limit the throughput. Core bridges selectively discard frames based on their color and the dropping threshold when congestion occurs. The bandwidth is allocated based on the weights. The performance of WNRN+1CM is evaluated with a theoretical analysis and computer simulations. WNRN+1CM can achieve weighted fairness in aggregation networks and multipoint networks. The throughput ratio matches the weights and the flow throughputs are limited to their maximum rate regardless of changes in traffic.

An echo-hiding scheme is presented to detect the pitch variation due to playback speed modification. The inserted time-spread echo is obtained by convolving the highpass filtered audio with a gain-controlled pseudo noise sequence. The perceptual evaluation confirms that the embedded echo is virtually imperceptible. Compared with the Fourier magnitude modulation, the proposed scheme attains better detection rates.

Software watermarking is a digital technique used to protect software by embedding some secret information as identification in order to discourage software piracy and unauthorized modification. Watermarking is still a relatively new field and has good potential in protecting software from privacy threats. However, there appears to be a security vulnerability in the watermark trigger behaviour, and has been frequently attacked. By tracing the watermark trigger behaviour, attackers can easily intrude into the software and locate and expose the watermark for modification. In order to address this problem, we propose an algorithm that obscures the watermark trigger behaviour by utilizing buffer overflow. The code of the watermark trigger behaviour is removed from the software product itself, making it more difficult for attackers to trace the software. Experiments show that the new algorithm has promising performance in terms of the imperceptibility of software watermark.

With the increasing demand for geographic information and position information, the geographic information system (GIS) has come to be widely used in city planning, utilities management, natural resource environments, land surveying, etc. While most GIS maps use vector data to represent geographic information more easily and in greater detail, a GIS vector map can be easily copied, edited, and illegally distributed, like most digital data. This paper presents an invisible, blind, secure, and robust watermarking method that provides copyright protection of GIS vector digital maps by means of arc length distribution. In our method, we calculate the arc lengths of all the polylines/polygons in a map and cluster these arc lengths into a number of groups. We then embed a watermark bit by changing the arc length distribution of a suitable group. For greater security and robustness, we use a pseudo-random number sequence for processing the watermark and embed the watermark multiple times in all maps. Experimental results verify that our method has good invisibility, security, and robustness against various geometric attacks and that the original map is not needed in the watermark extraction process.

Combining the strong anti-interference advantages of OFDM technology and the time-frequency analysis features of fractional Fourier transform (FFT), we apply OFDM as the coding modulation technology for digital watermarking. Based on the Arnold scrambling and OFDM coding, an innovative DFRFT digital watermarking algorithm is proposed. First, the watermark information is subjected to the Arnold scrambling encryption and OFDM coding transform. Then it is embedded into the FFT domain amplitude. The three parameters of scrambling iterations number, t, FFT order, p, and the watermark information embedded position, L, are used as keys, so that the algorithm has high safety. A simulation shows that the algorithm is highly robust against noise, filtering, compression, and other general attacks. The algorithm not only has strong security, but also makes a good balance between invisibility and robustness. But the possibility of using OFDM technique in robust image watermarking has drawn a very little attention.

With the rapid development of multi-view video coding (MVC) and light field rendering (LFR), Free-View Television (FTV) has emerged as new entrainment equipment, which can bring more immersive and realistic feelings for TV viewers. In FTV broadcasting system, the TV-viewer can freely watch a realistic arbitrary view of a scene generated from a number of original views. In such a scenario, the ownership of the multi-view video should be verified not only on the original views, but also on any virtual view. However, capacities of existing watermarking schemes as copyright protection methods for LFR-based FTV are only one bit, i.e., presence or absence of the watermark, which seriously impacts its usage in practical scenarios. In this paper, we propose a robust multi-bit watermarking scheme for LFR-based free-view video. The direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) watermark is constructed according to the multi-bit message and embedded into DCT domain of each view frame. The message can be extracted bit-by-bit from a virtual frame generated at an arbitrary view-point with a correlation detector. Furthermore, we mathematically prove that the watermark can be detected from any virtual view. Experimental results also show that the watermark in FTV can be successfully detected from a virtual view. Moreover, the proposed watermark method is robust against common signal processing attacks, such as Gaussian filtering, salt & peppers noising, JPEG compression, and center cropping.

In information retrieval from printed images considering the use of mobile devices, the correction of geometrical deformation and lens distortion is required, posing a heavy computational burden. In this paper, we propose a method of reducing the computational burden for such corrections. This method consists of improved extraction to find a line segment of a frame, the reconsideration of the interpolation method for image correction, and the optimization of image resolution in the correction process. The proposed method can reduce the number of computations significantly. The experimental result shows the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Digital watermarking techniques have been used to assert the ownerships of digital images. The ownership information is embedded in an image as a watermark so that the owner of the image can be identified. However, many types of attacks have been used in attempts to break or remove embedded watermarks. Therefore, the watermark should be very robust against various kinds of attacks. Among them, the print-and-scan (PS) attack is very challenging because it not only alters the pixel values but also changes the positions of the original pixels. In this paper, we propose a watermarking system operating in the discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain. The polarities of the DCT coefficients are modified for watermark embedding. This is done by considering the properties of DCT coefficients under the PS attack. The proposed system is able to maintain the image quality after watermarking and the embedded watermark is very robust against the PS attack as well.

In this paper, we propose a new online authoring tool for e-Learning system to meet the social demands for internationalized higher education. The tool includes two functions – an authoring function for creating video-based content by the instructor, and a viewing function for self-learning by students. In the authoring function, an instructor creates key markings onto the raw video stream to produce virtual video clips related to each slide. With key markings, some parts of the raw video stream can be easily skipped. The virtual video clips form an aggregated video stream that is used to synchronize with the slide presentation to create learning content. The synchronized content can be previewed immediately at the client computer prior to saving at the server. The aggregated video becomes the baseline for the viewing function. Based on aggregated video stream methodology, content editing requires only the changing of key markings without editing the raw video file. Furthermore, video and pointer synchronization is also proposed for enhancing the students' learning efficiency. In viewing function, video quality control and an adaptive video buffering method are implemented to support usage in various network environments. The total system is optimized to support cross-platform and cloud computing to break the limitation of various usages. The proposed method can provide simple authoring processes with clear user interface design for instructors, and help students utilize learning contents effectively and efficiently. In the user acceptance evaluation, most respondents agree with the usefulness, ease-of-use, and user satisfaction of the proposed system. The overall results show that the proposed authoring and viewing tools have higher user acceptance as a tool for e-Learning.

In this paper, we propose an improved data embedding and extraction method for information retrieval considering the use of mobile devices. Although the conventional method has demonstrated good results for images captured by cellular phones, some problems remain with this method. One problem is the lack of consideration of the construction of the code grouping in the code grouping method. In this paper, a new construction method for code grouping is proposed, and it is shown that a suitable grouping of the codes can be found. Another problem is the correction method of lens distortion, which is time-consuming. Therefore, to improve the processing speed, the golden section search method is adopted to estimate the distortion coefficients. In addition, a new tuning algorithm for the gain coefficient in the embedding process is also proposed. Experimental results show an increase in the detection rate for embedding data and a reduction of the processing time.

This paper presents a non-blind watermarking technique that is robust to non-linear geometric distortion attacks. This is one of the most challenging problems for copyright protection of digital content because it is difficult to estimate the distortion parameters for the embedded blocks. In our proposed scheme, the location of the blocks are recorded by the translation parameters from multiple Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) feature points. This method is based on two assumptions: SIFT features are robust to non-linear geometric distortion and even such non-linear distortion can be regarded as “linear” distortion in local regions. We conducted experiments using 149,800 images (7 standard images and 100 images downloaded from Flickr, 10 different messages, 10 different embedding block patterns, and 14 attacks). The results show that the watermark detection performance is drastically improved, while the baseline method can achieve only chance level accuracy.

In this letter, a design of inverse discrete cosine transform for energy-efficient watermarking mechanism based on DS-CDMA with significant energy and area reduction is presented. Taking advantage of converged input data value set as a precomputation concept, the proposed one-dimensional IDCT is a multiplierless hardware which differs from Loeffler architecture and has benefits of low complexity and low power consumption. The experimental results show that our design can reduce 85.2% energy consumption and 58.6% area. Various spectrum and spatial attacks are also tested to corroborate the robustness.

Probabilistic Packet Marking (PPM) is a scheme for IP traceback where each packet is marked randomly with an IP address of one router on the attack path in order for the victim to trace the source of attacks. In previous work, a network coding approach to PPM (PPM+NC) where each packet is marked with a random linear combination of router IP addresses was introduced to reduce number of packets required to infer the attack path. However, the previous work lacks a formal proof for benefit of network coding to PPM and its proposed scheme is restricted. In this paper, we propose a novel method to prove a strong theorem for benefit of network coding to PPM in the general case, which compares different perspectives (interests of collecting) at the collector in PPM+NC scheme. Then we propose Core PPM+NC schemes based on our core network coding approach to PPM. From experiments, we show that our Core PPM+NC schemes actually require less number of packets than previous schemes to infer the attack path. In addition, based on the relationship between Coupon Collector's Problem (CCP) and PPM, we prove that there exists numerous designs that CCP still benefits from network coding.

This study presents an adaptive quantization index modulation scheme applicable on a small audio segment, which in turn allows the watermarking technique to withstand time-shifting and cropping attacks. The exploitation of auditory masking further ensures the robustness and imperceptibility of the embedded watermark. Experimental results confirmed the efficacy of this scheme against common signal processing attacks.

A novel watermarked MDC system based on the SFQ algorithm and the sub-sampling method is proposed in this paper. Sub-sampling algorithm is applied onto the transformed image to introduce some redundancy between different channels. Secret information is embedded into the preprocessed sub-images. Good performance of the new system to defense the noise and the compression attacks is shown in the experimental results.

To improve the robustness and transparency of spread spectrum (SS) based watermarking, this paper presents a new informed embedding strategy, which we call selective host-interference cancellation. We show that part of the host-interference in SS-based watermarking is beneficial to blind watermark extraction or detection, and can be utilized rather than removed. Utilizing this positive effect of the host itself can improve the watermark robustness without significantly sacrificing the media fidelity. The proposed strategy is realized by selectively applying improved SS (ISS) modulation to traditional SS watermarking. Theoretically, the error probability of the new method under additive white Gaussian noise attacks is several orders of magnitude lower than that of ISS for high signal-to-watermark ratios, and the required minimum watermark power is reduced by 3dB. Experiments were conducted on real audio signals, and the results show that our scheme is robust against most of common attacks even in high-transparency or high-payload applications.

This paper proposes a method of accurately detecting the boundary of narrow stripes, such as lane markings, by employing gradient cues of edge points. Using gradient direction cues, the edge points at the two sides of the boundary of stripes are classified into two groups before the Hough transform is applied to extract the boundary lines. The experiments show that the proposed method improves significantly the performance in terms of the accuracy of boundary detection of narrow stripes over the conventional approaches without edge point grouping.

In this paper, a logarithmic adaptive quantization projection (LAQP) algorithm for digital watermarking is proposed. Conventional quantization index modulation uses a fixed quantization step in the watermarking embedding procedure, which leads to poor fidelity. Moreover, the conventional methods are sensitive to value-metric scaling attack. The LAQP method combines the quantization projection scheme with a perceptual model. In comparison to some conventional quantization methods with a perceptual model, the LAQP only needs to calculate the perceptual model in the embedding procedure, avoiding the decoding errors introduced by the difference of the perceptual model used in the embedding and decoding procedure. Experimental results show that the proposed watermarking scheme keeps a better fidelity and is robust against the common signal processing attack. More importantly, the proposed scheme is invariant to value-metric scaling attack.

This paper describes a blind watermarking scheme through cyclic signal processing. Due to various rapid networks, there is a growing demand of copyright protection for multimedia data. As efficient watermarking of images, there exist two major approaches: a quantization-based method and a correlation-based method. In this paper, we proposes a correlation-based watermarking technique of three-dimensional (3-D) polygonal models using the fast Fourier transforms (FFTs). For generating a watermark with desirable properties, similar to a pseudonoise signal, an impulse signal on a two-dimensional (2-D) space is spread through the FFT, the multiplication of a complex sinusoid signal, and the inverse FFT. This watermark, i.e., spread impulse signal, in a transform domain is converted to a spatial domain by an inverse wavelet transform, and embedded into 3-D data aligned by the principle component analysis (PCA). In the detection procedure, after realigning the watermarked mesh model through the PCA, we map the 3-D data on the 2-D space via block segmentation and averaging operation. The 2-D data are processed by the inverse system, i.e., the FFT, the division of the complex sinusoid signal, and the inverse FFT. From the resulting 2-D signal, we detect the position of the maximum value as a signature. For 3-D bunny models, detection rates and information capacity are shown to evaluate the performance of the proposed method.