Double expanding robust image watermarking based on Spread Spectrum technique and BCH coding

This paper presents a new algorithm for blind image watermarking which has a high robustness against common image processing attacks such as noise addition (Gaussian noise, Salt & Pepper noise, Speckle noise and etc.), JPEG and JPEG2000 compressions, Histogram Equalization, Average and Gaussian filters, Scaling and Cropping. According to this fact that a watermark with about 70 bits is enough for copyright protection, consequently in this paper a small watermark (64 bits) have been double expanded into multi larger meaningful bits with applying BCH error correction code and Spread Spectrum technique in order to reduce errors in extraction phase. Approximation subband of two levels DWT transform is divided into non-overlapping blocks and high frequency coefficients of DCT transform of each block is used for embedding the watermark. Embedding technique, which is used in this paper, is Spread Spectrum. Correlation between some coefficients of each embedded block and two predefined groups of random bits is used for watermark extraction, so this method is blind and does not need to the original image or additional information in extraction phase. Another idea, which is used in this paper, is calculating different gain factors for each block of approximation subband according to the texture of each block. Consequently this method allocates smaller gain factors to smooth blocks and larger gain factors to texture and rough blocks. So, manipulating in image will be more robust and imperceptible.