Robust optimization solution to the data hiding problem using distributed source coding principles

Inspired by a recently proposed constructive framework for the distributed source coding problem, we propose a powerful constructive approach to the watermarking problem, emphasizing the dual roles of 'source codes' and 'channel codes.' In our framework, we explore various source and channel codes to achieve watermarks that are robust to attackers in terms of maximizing the distortion between the corrupted coded-source signal and the original signal while holding the distortion between the coded-source signal and the original signal constant. We solve the resulting combinatorial optimization problem using an original technique based on robust optimization and convex programming.