Robust and Blind Audio Watermarking Algorithm in Dual Domain for Overcoming Synchronization Attacks

How to effectively resist synchronization attacks is the most challenging topic in the research of robust watermarking algorithms. A robust and blind audio watermarking algorithm for overcoming synchronization attacks is proposed in dual domain by considering time domain and transform domain. Based on analysing the characteristics of synchronization attacks, an implicit synchronization mechanism (ISM) is developed in the time domain, which can effectively track the appropriate region for embedding and extracting watermarks. The data in this region will be subjected to discrete cosine transform (DCT) and singular value decomposition (SVD) in turn to obtain the eigenvalue that can be utilized to carry watermarks. In order to extract the watermark blindly, the eigenvalue will be quantized. Genetic algorithm (GA) is utilized to optimize the quantization step to balance both transparency and robustness. The experimental results confirm that the proposed algorithm not only withstands various conventional signal processing operations but also resists malicious synchronization attacks, such as time scale modification (TSM), pitch-shifting modification (PSM), jittering, and random cropping. Especially, it can overcome TSM with strength from −30% to +30%, which is much higher than the standard of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and far superior to the other algorithms in related papers.