High payload multi-channel dual audio watermarking algorithm based on discrete wavelet transform and singular value decomposition

Digital watermarking technology is concerned with solving the problem of copyright protection, data authentication, content identification, distribution, and duplication of the digital media due to the great developments in computers and Internet technology. Recently, protection of digital audio signals has attracted the attention of researchers. This paper proposes a new audio watermarking scheme based on discrete wavelet transform (DWT), singular value decomposition (SVD), and quantization index modulation (QIM) with a synchronization code embedded with two encrypted watermark images or logos inserted into a stereo audio signal. In this algorithm, the original audio signal is split into blocks, and each block is decomposed with a two-level DWT, and then the approximate low-frequency sub-band coefficients are decomposed by SVD transform to obtain a diagonal matrix. The prepared watermarking and synchronization code bit stream is embedded into the diagonal matrix using QIM. After that, we perform inverse singular value decomposition (ISVD) and inverse discrete wavelet transform (IDWT) to obtain the watermarked audio signal. The watermark can be blindly extracted without knowledge of the original audio signal. Experimental results show that the transparency and imperceptibility of the proposed algorithm is satisfied, and that robustness is strong against popular audio signal processing attacks. High watermarking payload is achieved through the proposed scheme.