A VLSI architecture for watermarking in a secure still digital camera (S/sup 2/DC) design

Watermarking is the process that embeds data called a watermark, a tag, or a label into a multimedia object, such as images, video, or text, for their copyright protection. According to human perception, the digital watermarks can be divided into four categories.. A watermark is a secondary translucent image overlaid into the primary image and appears to a viewer on a careful inspection. The in watermark is embedded in such a way that the modifications made to the pixel value is perceptually not noticed, and it can be recovered only with an appropriate decoding mechanism. This paper presents a new very large scale integration (VLSI) architecture for implementing two digital image watermarking schemes. The proposed architecture is designed to aim at easy integration into any existing digital camera framework. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first VLSI architecture for implementing watermarking schemes. A prototype chip consisting of 28 469 gates is implemented using 0.35-/spl mu/ technology, which consumes 6.9-mW power while operating at 292 MHz.

[1]  Saraju P. Mohanty,et al.  Watermarking of Digital Images , 1999 .

[2]  J. Vandewege,et al.  Implementation of a real-time digital watermarking process for broadcast monitoring on a TriMedia VLIW processor , 2000 .

[3]  Shih-Fu Chang,et al.  Embedding visible video watermarks in the compressed domain , 1998, Proceedings 1998 International Conference on Image Processing. ICIP98 (Cat. No.98CB36269).

[4]  Deepa Kundur,et al.  Hardware implementation perspectives of digital video watermarking algorithms , 2003, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[5]  Gary Friedman,et al.  The trustworthy digital camera: restoring credibility to the photographic image , 1993 .

[6]  Gordon W. Braudaway,et al.  Protecting publicly available images with a visible image watermark , 1996, Electronic Imaging.

[7]  Anastasios Tefas,et al.  Robust spatial image watermarking using progressive detection , 2001, 2001 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. Proceedings (Cat. No.01CH37221).

[8]  Mohan S. Kankanhalli,et al.  A dual watermarking technique for images , 1999, MULTIMEDIA '99.

[9]  Saraju P. Mohanty,et al.  VLSI implementation of invisible digital watermarking algorithms towards the development of a secure JPEG encoder , 2003, 2003 IEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Systems (IEEE Cat. No.03TH8682).

[10]  Mohan S. Kankanhalli,et al.  An Adaptive DCT Domain Visible Watermarking Technique for Protection of Publicly Available Images , 2001 .

[11]  Kamran Eshraghian,et al.  Principles of CMOS VLSI Design: A Systems Perspective , 1985 .

[12]  Annajirao Garimella,et al.  VLSI implementation of online digital watermarking technique with difference encoding for 8-bit gray scale images , 2003, 16th International Conference on VLSI Design, 2003. Proceedings..

[13]  Mohan S. Kankanhalli,et al.  A DCT domain visible watermarking technique for images , 2000, 2000 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo. ICME2000. Proceedings. Latest Advances in the Fast Changing World of Multimedia (Cat. No.00TH8532).

[14]  Nasir D. Memon,et al.  Protecting digital media content , 1998, CACM.

[15]  O. Roeva,et al.  Information Hiding: Techniques for Steganography and Digital Watermarking , 2000 .

[16]  J. David Irwin,et al.  Digital Logic Circuit Analysis and Design , 1995 .

[17]  Ingemar J. Cox,et al.  Secure spread spectrum watermarking for multimedia , 1997, IEEE Trans. Image Process..

[18]  Anastasios Tefas,et al.  Image authentication techniques for surveillance applications , 2001, Proc. IEEE.