Robust Digital Watermarking for Multimedia Content Authentication in DWT-DCT Domain

Abstract

Most of the existing single domain Watermarking schemes suffer with security of multimedia content. To address this limitation, a hybrid watermarking framework integrating DWT and DCT transforms is introduced in this study. The proposed approach initially applies the Arnold transform to the color cover image to strengthen data security through image scrambling. Subsequently, the encrypted image is decomposed using a single-level discrete wavelet transform (DWT), where the selected sub-bands (𝐿𝐿1 and 𝐻𝐻1) are utilized for further watermark embedding operations. To achieve a balanced trade-off between visual quality and robustness, the chosen sub-bands are partitioned into 8×8 blocks and transformed using the discrete cosine transform (DCT). Finally, the watermark logo is embedded into the mid-frequency DCT coefficients, resulting in the generation of a secure and imperceptible watermarked image. The performance is measured on SIPI dataset in terms of PSNR, SSIM, NC. The experimental finds demonstrate that the presented method outperforms with the existing relevant schemes.