Development of Compression Tolerable and Highly Implementable Watermarking Method for Mobile Devices

Abstract

SUMMARYThis paper reports on the image compression tolerability and high implementability of a novel proposed watermarking method that uses a morphological wavelet transform based on max-plus algebra. This algorithm is suitable for embedded low-power processors in mobile devices. For objective and unified evaluation of the capability of the proposed watermarking algorithm, we focus attention on a watermarking contest presented by the IHC, which belongs to the IEICE and investigate the image quality and tolerance against JPEG compression attack. During experiments for this contest, six benchmark images processed by the proposed watermarking is done to reduce the file size of original images to 1/10, 1/20, or less, and the error rate of embedding data is reduced to 0%. Thus, the embedded data can be completely extracted. The PSNR value is up to 54.66 dB in these experiments. Furthermore, when the smallest image size is attained 0.49 MB and the PSNR value become about 52 dB, the proposed algorithm maintains very high quality with an error rate of 0%. Additionally, the processing time of the proposed watermarking can realize about 416.4 and 4.6 times faster than that of DCT and HWT on the ARM processor, respectively. As a result, the proposed watermarking method achieves effective processing capability for mobile processors.

Morphological Methods in Image Processing for Embedded Processors

“…The MMT algorithm has been focused on to achieve both high quality and high compression in fast image processing on mobile embedded processors [1], [2], [4], [15]- [18]. This transform has rich potential for effective directional image coding according to these studies.…”

“…This is because, in the case of embedding information data in digital contents for mobile applications, real-time processing speed is more important than data security and image quality. With this background, we report max-plus algebra-based morphological wavelet transform (MMT) watermarking as a novel data-embedding algorithm for highly parallel processing with a mobile embedded processor [2], [18], [21]. Figure 18 shows the watermarking flow using the MMT for the case of a 2 × 2 pixel sampling window.…”

Adaptive Multi-Directional Max-Plus Algebra-Based Morphological Wavelet Transform

“…These methods are thus difficult to implement with general-purpose processors, especially low-power embedded mobile processors in cellular phones and smartphones. For overcoming these problems, a max-plus algebra-based morphological wavelet transform has been focused on to have both high-quality and high-compression for fast image processing on mobile embedded processors [13]- [19]. This transform is rich in potential for effective directional image coding.…”