Digital Signal Processing 106 (2020) 102805

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Digital Signal Processing

www.elsevier.com/locate/dsp

Robust and reliable image copyright protection scheme using

downsampling and block transform in integer wavelet domain
Lina Zhang, Deyun Wei ∗
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Xidian University, Xi’an, 710071, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, a robust watermarking algorithm in integer wavelet domain using downsampling is
Available online 13 July 2020 proposed. The innovations of this paper can be summarized as follows. First, after downsampling both
the host image and watermark, each sub-watermark is embedded into the corresponding sub-host image.
Keywords:
Second, four sub-watermarks are encrypted by pixel scrambling and fractional random transform, and the
Image watermarking
Integer wavelet transform
right principal component of watermark is embedded in the host image to avoid false positive problem.
Fractional random transform Third, two-level singular value decomposition and block cosine transform are performed on host image
Guided dynamic particle swarm and watermark respectively, and the dual embedding of watermark is realized. Fourth, guided dynamic
optimization particle swarm optimization is used to optimize the embedding factors. The simulation results show that
Right principal component the proposed watermarking algorithm satisfies the requirements of robust watermarking very well. It has
large capacity and strong robustness to common attacks. Moreover, compared with the existing related
algorithms, this algorithm has obvious advantages.
© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
In the era of rapid development of multimedia information
technology, people can obtain needed resources in a variety of
ways. The data can be easily and completely duplicated, which
brings great convenience to human life, work, scientific research
and so on [1]. However, the information security issues have
arisen, which has attracted great attention. Copyright ownership
is an important aspect of information security, and digital water-
marking is an effective way to achieve copyright protection [2].
It achieves the purpose of copyright protection by embedding the
content representing copyright information into the digital works
to be protected. In recent years, many watermarking algorithms
have been proposed [1–15].
There are many classification methods of watermarking algo-
rithm. According to characteristics, it can be divided into robust
watermarking and fragile watermarking [16,17]. The former is
mainly used in the copyright protection of digital works, which re-
quires strong robustness and security. The latter is often used for
integrity protection and authentication of digital works [18]. When
the content of digital works changes, the watermark information
will change accordingly, which can identify whether the original
* Corresponding author at: School of Mathematics and Statistics, Xidian Univer-
sity, No.2 South Taibai Road, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710071, China.
E-mail addresses: azhang2017@126.com (L. Zhang), dywei@xidian.edu.cn,
weideyun0632@126.com (D. Wei).
data has been tampered with [19]. Most of the current research fo-
cuses on robust watermarking algorithm for copyright protection,
such algorithm usually embeds the watermark into the transform
domain of the host image to enhance robustness. Discrete Fourier
transform (DFT), discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and discrete
cosine transform (DCT) are the most commonly used transform do-
main methods [9,10,14,20–27]. In addition, some time-frequency
analysis tools, such as fractional wavelet transform (FWT) [6], frac-
tional Fourier transform (FRFT) [28], linear canonical transform
(LCT) [29], Contourlet transform (CT) [30], etc., are also used in in-
formation security, especially in digital watermarking [6,16,31–35].
Because the robust watermarking algorithm also has high require-
ment for security, different encryption schemes have been pro-
posed and used in watermarking algorithm to enhance the security
of the algorithm. In image encryption, besides the widely used
chaotic mapping [8,36], there are time-frequency transform meth-
ods such as gyrator transform (GT), FRFT and LCT [36,37]. This
paper mainly studies the robust watermarking. For the require-
ments of such watermarking, a watermarking algorithm with high
security and robustness needs to be designed.
DWT has important applications in the copyright protection of
digital works. Its variants, integer wavelet transform (IWT) and re-
dundant wavelet transform (RWT), can also be used for digital wa-
termarking. Many related algorithms have been proposed [10,19,
20,22,38–44]. In addition, singular value decomposition (SVD) has
excellent properties and is often used to improve the robustness
of watermarking algorithm. However, because of the high compu-

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsp.2020.102805
1051-2004/© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
2 L. Zhang, D. Wei / Digital Signal Processing 106 (2020) 102805
tational complexity, it is often combined with transform domain
method to design watermarking algorithm [1,8,22,24,38,39,45,46].
Makbol et al. [38] proposed to apply IWT to host image, then add
the watermark directly to the singular values of all sub-bands in
host image. Moreover, a signature scheme was proposed to avoid
false positive problem (FPP). Unlike [38], Ansari et al. [39] only
selected the low and middle frequency sub-bands of the host im-
age to hide the watermark, in which the embedding factor was
optimized by artificial bee colony algorithm. Furthermore, this al-
gorithm gave a new signature scheme. In the above two algorithms
[38,39], the signature scheme has been presented to solve the FPP.
However, on the one hand, the FPP cannot be completely avoided
in this way. On the other hand, the generation, embedding and
extraction of signatures make the watermarking algorithm com-
plicated, increasing the computational cost of the algorithm. In
addition, the security of these two algorithms is low, and they also
shows poor robustness in resisting scaling attack. In the algorithm
proposed by Makbol et al. [43], a new method for solving FPP was
introduced, in which the left singular vector of the watermark was
embedded into the singular value of the integer wavelet domain in
the host image. Although this algorithm completely solves FPP, its
security is low. Moreover, since the SVD is directly applied to the
watermark, the time complexity of this algorithm is high. Further-
more, the robustness of this algorithm against scaling, translation
and sharpen attacks is weak. Zhou et al. [20] selected the high
frequency of the host image wavelet domain and applied 8 × 8
block DCT to it, then extracted the medium frequency coefficients
of each block to construct a new matrix and performed fractional
random transform (FRNT) on it. Finally, the encrypted watermark
was added to the FRNT coefficients of host image. This algorithm
has a small watermark capacity. In addition, when watermarked
image is subjected to JPEG compression, scaling, translation and
cropping attacks, the quality of extracted watermark is very poor.
In the algorithm presented by Hurrah et al. [19], the low-frequency
of host image in the wavelet domain was divided into 8 × 8 blocks,
and each block was further divided into four 4 × 4 blocks, then
each sub-block was processed by DCT. Finally, the encrypted wa-
termark bits were embedded by modifying the difference between
the selected two DCT coefficients. Compared with [20], the water-
mark capacity of this algorithm is lower. Besides, the transparency
of the algorithm is low, and the resistance of this algorithm to
gaussian noise, scaling and translation attacks is weak. Arunkumar
et al. [45] first applied 8 × 8 block redundant integer wavelet trans-
form to the host image, then performed DCT to the low frequency
of each block and encrypted watermark. After dividing the DCT co-
efficient of the watermark into 4 × 4 blocks, the singular value of
each watermark block is added to the corresponding host image
block. The transparency and security of this algorithm are high,
but its robustness is poor, especially for Gaussian noise, speckle
noise, salt & pepper noise, scaling, translation and sharpening at-
tacks. To sum up, the robustness of these algorithms against some
common attacks is weak, and the capacity is small. Moreover, the
security needs to be improved.
In view of the problems mentioned above, we propose a se-
cure and robust watermarking algorithm by introducing down-
sampling, two-level SVD and block DCT. Firstly, the host image
and watermark are preprocessed by downsampling, and four sub-
watermarks are double-encrypted with pixel scrambling and dis-
crete fractional random transform to enhance its security. The
computation speed of block DCT and SVD is much faster than
global transform. Therefore, two-level SVD is used to obtain the
corresponding singular value for the low and high frequency
parts of the integer wavelet domain in the host image. The low-
frequency part of watermark image in integer wavelet domain is
transformed into DCT domain by block DCT, then its singular value
is obtained with SVD. Finally, the right principal component of
each sub-watermark is embedded into the singular value matrices
of corresponding sub-host image in the low and high frequency
sub-bands. In order to balance the invisibility and robustness, we
use guided dynamic particle swarm optimization to obtain the op-
timal embedding factors. The double embedding of the watermark
improves the robustness of the watermarking algorithm. Based on
the experimental results, the proposed algorithm has good trans-
parency and security, and the watermark with the same size as the
original image can be hidden in the digital image. Moreover, this
algorithm is robust to common attacks, especially for JPEG com-
pression, scaling, translation and various filtering attacks.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Some theories
used in this algorithm are introduced in Section 2. Section 3 gives
a detailed description of proposed algorithm, including the em-
bedding and extraction processes, as well as the optimization of
the embedding factors. Simulation results and the comparison with
existing related algorithms are presented in Section 4. Finally, the
conclusion is given in Section 5.
2. Preliminaries
2.1. Integer wavelet transform (IWT)
As an extension of wavelet analysis theory, IWT not only inher-
its many advantages of DWT, but also implements many functions
that DWT cannot achieve. For example, it has real reversibility and
can achieve complete lossless compression of image. Moreover,
the IWT with lifting framework has low computational complex-
ity, saves storage space and is easy to implement in hardware.
The lifting framework method is a new structure for implement-
ing wavelet transform, which was established by Sweldens and
Daubechies in 1996. Like DWT, IWT is used for image decom-
position in digital watermarking algorithm. IWT can be realized
through three stages of splitting, predicting and updating [39].
1) Split: Decompose the original signal si into odd sequence
o i −1 and even sequence e i −1 , and each sequence is half the length
of the original signal.
2) Predict: The odd sequence o i −1 is predicted based on the
even sequence e i −1 by using the correlation between two se-
quences, and the difference di −1 between the actual value and the
predicted value is the detail coefficient, corresponding to the high
frequency portion of the original signal.
di −1 = o i −1 − P (e i −1 ) (1)
3) Update: In order to maintain some overall characteristics
of the original data, updates are needed. The updating process is
achieved by operator U , and the low frequency part si −1 of the
original signal can be obtained by the following equation (2).
si −1 = e i −1 + U (di −1 ) (2)
2.2. Discrete fractional random transform (DFRNT)
DFRNT is defined based on discrete fractional Fourier transform
(DFRFT). Because the randomness of DFRNT provides greater secu-
rity for encryption, it can be used for image encryption [16]. In
the definition of DFRNT, the real symmetric matrix in the DFRFT
is randomized, then the eigenvectors can be randomized. Firstly,
the random matrix P is generated using the key k, then random
real symmetric matrix Q is obtained with the random matrix P
based on formula (3). Finally, the normalized eigenvector matrix V
of symmetric matrix Q is calculated by numerical method.
Q = ( P + P T )/2 (3)
 L. Zhang, D. Wei / Digital Signal Processing 106 (2020) 102805
The eigenvalue matrix of DFRNT can be obtained in the follow-
ing equation (4), where α and T c indicate the fractional order and
period of this transform.
D αR = diag {[1, exp(−2i πα / T c ), · · · , exp(−2i πα ( N − 1)/ T c )]}
Based on the obtained eigenvalues and eigenvectors, the kernel
matrix of DFRNT can be written as:
α = V D αR V T
The DFRNT of image I can be expressed as the equation (6). For
an image, two different kernel matrices can be used to perform
DFRNT on its row and column.
α α
I R =  y 2 I x 1
2.3. Guided dynamic particle swarm optimization (GDPSO)
Particle swarm optimization is lack of dynamic speed adjust-
ment, and it is easy to fall into local optimum, resulting in low
convergence accuracy and difficult convergence. However, the im-
proved GDPSO can make the particles continuously improve their
optimum position, thus improving the global optimal position.
Since GDPSO overcomes the shortcomings of particle swarm op-
timization, it can be used to optimize the embedding factor to
achieve better results. GDPSO mainly includes the following four
parts:
1) Identify and retain potential positions for affecting particles
trapped in pBest.
2) Check whether particles and groups satisfy trapped condi-
tions before reacting.
3) Generate temporary individual and global optimals as needed
to deal with trapped particles and groups.
4) Check the validity and acceptability of temporary individual
optimal and global optimal for problem solving.
The general process of GDPSO is given in Table 1. In GDPSO, the
velocities of ordinary particles and trapped particles are updated
by the following formulas (7) and (8), respectively. Moreover, the
position of each particle is updated with the equation (9). In ad-
dition, Table 2 gives an explanation of the relevant symbols in the
GDPSO. For more details on GDPSO, please refer to [47].
v i (t + 1) =ω ∗ v i (t ) + c 1 ∗ rand1 ∗ ( p Best i (t ) − xi (t ))
+ c 2 ∗ rand2 ∗ ( g Best (t ) − xi (t ))
v di (t + 1) =ω ∗ v di (t ) + c 1 ∗ randd1 ∗ ( p Best T id (t ) − xdi (t ))
+ c 2 ∗ randd2 ∗ ( g Best T d (t ) − xdi (t ))
xdi (t + 1) = xdi (t ) + v di (t + 1)
3. Proposed scheme
In this section, we propose a robust and large capacity water-
marking algorithm based on two-level SVD and block DCT in the
integer wavelet domain. Sections 3.1 and 3.2 show the detailed
embedding and extraction algorithms, and the specific process of
optimizing the embedding factors with GDPSO is given in Sec-
tion 3.3.
3
3.1. Watermark embedding algorithm
In the embedding algorithm, firstly, the host image and water-
mark are downsampled, and all sub-watermarks are encrypted to
enhance the security of the watermarking algorithm. Then, IWT
is performed on the host image and encrypted watermarks, and
(4) the low and high-frequency parts of host image are processed
by the block SVD. The first element of each singular value block
is extracted to construct new matrices, and SVD is applied to
these matrices again. The block DCT is applied to the low fre-
quency sub-band of watermark, and the intermediate frequency
element of each block is extracted to form new matrices, then SVD
(5) is performed on them. Finally, the right principal component in-
formation of sub-watermark is embedded into the low and high
frequency regions of corresponding sub-host image. The flow chart
of watermark embedding process is shown in Fig. 1 (a), and the
specific embedding procedure is given below.
Step1: Based on the following equation (10), the host image H
(6) with the size of M × N is downsampled, and four sub-images H i
are obtained, which all have a size of M /2 × N /2.
H 1 (m, n) = H (2m − 1, 2n − 1)
H 2 (m, n) = H (2m − 1, 2n)
(10)
H 3 (m, n) = H (2m, 2n − 1)
H 4 (m, n) = H (2m, 2n)
Step2: Each sub-image H i is transformed into integer wavelet
domain with IWT, then two-level SVD is used to obtain the sin-
gular values of low and high-frequency parts. That is, these two
sub-bands are subjected to block processing in 4 × 4 size, and
SVD is performed on each block to obtain the corresponding sin-
LL LL HH HH
gular vectors U p ,qi , V p ,qi , U p ,q i , V p ,q i and singular value matrices
LL HH
S p ,qi , S p ,q i , where p = 1, 2, · · · , M /16, q = 1, 2, · · · , N /16. Then the
first element in the upper left corner of each singular value matrix
is extracted to form the new matrices E iL , E iH , and the correspond-
ing singular value matrices S iL , S iH of the size M /16 × N /16 are
obtained by using SVD again.
Step3: Four sub-watermarks W i of size r /2 × c /2 are obtained
by downsampling the watermark image W in the same way as
host image, where r × c is the size of watermark W .
Step4: The sub-watermarks W i are first encrypted by scram-
bling the pixel location, then DFRNT is used to achieve the second-
level encryption. Pixel scrambling is accomplished by the following
method. First, the image matrix is converted into a vector, then
the vector is sorted in ascending order. Finally, the sorted vector is
converted into a matrix, which is the scrambled image.
Step5: IWT is applied to each encrypted sub-watermark, and
4 × 4 non-overlapping partition is performed on the low fre-
quency sub-band. Then each block is processed by DCT, and DCT
w
(7) coefficient blocks C s,ti are obtained, where s = 1, 2, · · · , r /16, t =
1, 2, · · · , c /16. Next, each DCT coefficient block is scanned with
Zig-Zag mode, and the ninth element is extracted to construct new
matrices. By applying SVD to these matrices, the singular value
(8) arrays S iw and singular vectors U iw , V iw of watermark can be ob-
tained.
(9)
Step6: The right principal components P C iV w of each sub-
watermark, i.e. the product of the singular value matrix S iw and
the transposed right singular vector V iw T , are calculated by for-
mula (11). Then PC iV w are added to the singular value matrices of
the low and high-frequency regions in the corresponding sub-host
image based on the relation (12), respectively.
P C iV w = S iw · V iw T (11)
Lmodi f y
Si = S iL + L ·μ P C iV w
Hmodi f y (12)
Si = S iH + H μ · P C iV w
4 L. Zhang, D. Wei / Digital Signal Processing 106 (2020) 102805

Table 1
Process of GDPSO implementation.

GDPSO algorithm
1 procedure GDPSO
2 Initialize the position xi and velocity v i of each particle randomly
3 Set the initial values of parameters: pCount i = 0, gCount = 0
4 itr = 1
5 while itr <= itrmax do
6 Calculate the fitness value for each particle
7 Update pBest and gBest
8 Update positions in the following way if gBest improved
9 if #( positions) > P O S I T I O N S M A X then
10 Remove the oldest element from positions
11 end if
12 Store gBest as a new element in positions
13 Update pCount and gCount
14 if pCount == P C O U N T M A X then
15 Reconstruct pBest for such particles
16 end if
17 if gCount == GC O U N T M A X then
18 Reconstruct gBest for swarm
19 end if
20 Update the velocities of different particles with formulas (7) and (8)
21 Update the position of each particle by equation (9)
22 Evaluate the effectiveness of the reconstruction
23 Update pBest of particles who recovered from stuckness within PTMAX iterations otherwise restore previous personal best
24 Update gBest of the swarm if stuckness avoided within G T M A X iterations otherwise restore previous global best
25 itr = itr + 1
26 end while
27 end procedure

Table 2
Description of relevant symbols in GDPSO.

Symbol Description
pCount i Number of successive iterations when p Best i does not improve for i-th particle
gCount Number of successive iterations when g Best does not improve
itr Current iteration number
itrmax Maximum allowed iterations
p Best i The current best position of the i-th particle
g Best Swarm’s current best position
positions Matrix for recent best positions attained by the swarm as potential positions
P O SIT I O NSM AX Upper bound for size of positions matrix
PC OU NT M AX Upper bound of iterations for which each particle waits to find improvement in its p Best i
GC O U N T M A X Upper bound of iterations for which the swarm wait to find improvement in g Best
p Best T i Temporarily reconstructed vector corresponding to p Best i for the i-th particle
gBestT Temporarily reconstructed vector corresponding to g Best
PTMAX Upper bound of iterations for which p Best T i will time to improve p Best i
GT M AX Upper bound of iterations for which gBestT will be allowed to run for improving g Best
ω Inertia factor
c1 , c2 Learning factor
rand Random number on interval [0,1]

modi f y modi f y
Where μ L and μ H are embedding factors, their values are de- modified sub-bands LL i and H H i . Then inverse IWT is
termined by GDPSO. The subscripts L and H represent the cor- applied to the medium frequency sub-bands and the modified low
responding watermark embedding location, namely low frequency and high-frequency sub-bands. Finally, the four watermarked sub-
and high frequency. images are synthesized to obtain the final watermarked image.
Step7: Inverse SVD is applied to the modified singular value
Lmodi f y Hmodi f y
matrices S i and S i , and the reconstructed matrices
Lrec Hrec 3.2. Watermark extraction algorithm
Ei , Ei are obtained. Then, the first element of each original
LL HH
singular value matrix blocks S p ,qi , S p ,q i
is replaced with the ele-
ment of the corresponding reconstructed matrices E iLrec , E iHrec , as Watermark extraction can be regarded as an inverse process of
shown in the following equation (13). Where p = 1, 2, · · · , M /16, embedding. Fig. 1 (b) shows the flow chart of extracting the water-
q = 1, 2, · · · , N /16. mark from the watermarked image. Next, the steps of watermark
extraction are given.
LL Step1: The watermarked image that may be attacked is pro-
S p ,qi (1, 1) ← E iLrec ( p , q)
HH (13) cessed with Steps 1-2 shown in the embedding process to obtain
S p ,q i (1, 1) ← E iHrec ( p , q)
its singular value matrices S iLne w , S iHne w .
Step8: Combining the left and right singular vector blocks Step2: Firstly, the right principal components of watermark are
LL LL HH HH
U p ,qi , V p ,qi , U p ,q i , V p ,q i and the watermarked singular value ma- extracted from S iLne w , S iHne w by the following relationship (14).
trix blocks, 4 × 4 image blocks are obtained by performing inverse Then inverse SVD and block DCT are performed on the extracted
SVD on them. These image blocks are synthesized to obtain the information, and inverse IWT is applied to the extracted low-
 L. Zhang, D. Wei / Digital Signal Processing 106 (2020) 102805 5

Fig. 1. Block diagram of the proposed watermarking algorithm.

6 L. Zhang, D. Wei / Digital Signal Processing 106 (2020) 102805

frequency sub-band and other three sub-bands to obtain the en-

crypted sub-watermark.

P C iLext = ( S iLne w − S iL )/μ L

(14)
P C iHext = ( S iHne w − S iH )/μ H
Step3: Based on the provided keys, DFRNT and inverse pixel
scrambling are used to decrypt the extracted watermark, and the
corresponding decrypted sub-watermark is obtained.
Step4: The sub-watermarks extracted from the low and high
frequency parts are synthesized to obtain two watermark im-
ages. Then the normalized correlation coefficients between two
extracted watermarks and original watermark are calculated, and
the watermark with larger correlation coefficient value is selected
as the final extracted watermark.

3.3. Optimization of embedding factors

As we all know, the imperceptibility and robustness of the ro-

bust watermarking algorithm are contradictory. In the proposed
watermarking algorithm, the values of two embedding factors have
a great impact on these two characteristics. When the values of
embedding factors μ L and μ H increase, the invisibility of this al-
gorithm becomes worse, but the robustness becomes stronger. On
the contrary, with the decrease of μ L and μ H , the invisibility will
be better, but the robustness will be weaker. Therefore, in order to
balance the invisibility and robustness of the proposed watermark-
ing algorithm, we use GDPSO to optimize the embedding factors.
The detailed process for optimizing the embedding factors with
GDPSO is given in Fig. 2, where the fitness function is shown in
equation (15). In this fitness function, NC i represents the nor-
malized correlation coefficient between the watermark extracted
under the i-th attack and original watermark, and SSIM is the
structural similarity index value between the host image and the
watermarked image. T a denotes the total number of attack types
Fig. 2. Block diagram of optimizing the embedding factors with GDPSO.
used in the optimization process, and the weight coefficients r1
and r2 are taken as 0.6 and 0.4, respectively.
to measure its robustness. The definitions of PSNR, SSIM and NC

Ta and more detailed information can be found in [40].
F itness = r1 · NC i / T a + r2 · S S I M (15)
i =1 4.1. Invisibility analysis

In the process of optimizing the embedding factor, the num-
ber of particles in the swarm is 40. The initial position of
each particle, i.e. the embedding factor, is the random value
in the range of [0, 0.3], and the velocity is randomly selected
within [−0.06, 0.06]. Moreover, the parameters of GDPSO are
set as: itrmax = 200, P O S I T I O N S M A X = 20, P C O U N T M A X =
GC O U N T M A X = 10, PTMAX = G T M A X = 2, c 1 = c 2 = 2, ω = 0.8.
4. Experimental results and analysis
This part mainly analyzes the performance of proposed water-
marking algorithm. We used a computer running Windows 7 with
Intel-i5-6500, 3.20GHz CPU and 8G memory, and carried out sim-
ulation experiment on R2017b version Matlab. The effectiveness
of proposed watermarking algorithm is verified from four aspects:
invisibility, security, robustness and capacity, and the proposed al-
gorithm is compared with the existing related algorithms in detail
from different aspects. The 8-bit 512 × 512 host images and 8-bit
256 × 256 watermark images shown in Fig. 3 are used in the simu-
lation. For the references used for comparison, the watermark with
the same size as used in the corresponding algorithm is adopted.
The transparency of the watermarking algorithm is evaluated by
two metrics: peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural simi-
larity index (SSIM). Normalized correlation coefficient (NC) is used
In this part, we analyze the invisibility of watermarking al-
gorithms. The watermarked images can be obtained by embed-
ding the watermark into the host images based on the algorithms
shown in Section 3.1 and [19,20,38,39,43,45]. The PSNR, SSIM val-
ues given in Tables 3–4 are used to measure the transparency of
these algorithms. Generally, when the PSNR value between the wa-
termarked image and host image is greater than 30 dB, the human
eye cannot distinguish the two images. Moreover, if the PSNR value
is larger, the invisibility of the algorithm is better. For SSIM, when
its value is closer to 1, it means that the transparency of the wa-
termarking algorithm is better. As can be seen from Tables 3–4,
the PSNR values of the proposed algorithm are all around 51 dB,
and its SSIM values are all larger than 0.9975. Moreover, the av-
erage PSNR value of the proposed algorithm is 51.4238 dB, and
it is greater than [19,20,38,39,43] and [45]. In addition, compared
with other six algorithms, the proposed algorithm has larger aver-
age SSIM value. Thus, the proposed algorithm has better invisibility
and satisfies the transparency requirement of the watermarking al-
gorithm.
4.2. Security and reliability analysis
Based on the keys of the watermarking scheme, the security of
this algorithm is analyzed. In the proposed algorithm, four sub-
 L. Zhang, D. Wei / Digital Signal Processing 106 (2020) 102805 7

Fig. 3. (a-h) Host images: Couple, House, Splash, Zelda, Airplane, Lena, MRI, X-ray (i-k) Watermark images: Cameraman, QR code, Fingerprint.

Table 3
Invisibility analysis of the proposed algorithm with PSNR, SSIM.

Watermark Metric Couple House Splash Zelda Airplane Lena MRI X-ray
Cameraman PSNR 51.1588 50.0939 50.7374 51.0302 51.5399 51.2215 52.1512 52.5633
SSIM 0.9985 0.9981 0.9979 0.9981 0.9984 0.9983 0.9982 0.9981

QR code PSNR 51.3544 50.8291 52.0992 51.4952 51.3684 51.7138 51.5560 51.7205
SSIM 0.9986 0.9982 0.9978 0.9982 0.9985 0.9984 0.9984 0.9983

Fingerprint PSNR 50.6781 50.7535 52.0943 52.0410 51.4162 51.2510 51.4953 51.8098
SSIM 0.9986 0.9982 0.9979 0.9982 0.9985 0.9984 0.9983 0.9982

Table 4
Invisibility comparison between the proposed algorithm and existing algorithms based on average PSNR and SSIM values.

Metric Hurrah et al. [19] Zhou et al. [20] Makbol et al. [38] Ansari et al. [39] Makbol et al. [43] Arunkumar et al. [45] Proposed algorithm
PSNR 40.9030 40.5215 42.8732 44.6659 42.9378 46.8435 51.4238
SSIM 0.9787 0.9736 0.9856 0.9920 0.9689 0.9947 0.9983

watermarks obtained by downsampling are encrypted before be-
ing processed. Firstly, the pixel position of each sub-watermark is
scrambled, then the scrambled watermarks are further encrypted
with DFRNT. In this process, there are five keys: fractional orders
α1 , α2 , period T c and the keys k1 , k2 that control the generation
of random matrices in row and column transforms. The values of
these five keys are set as: α1 = 0.65, α2 = 0.75, T c = 4, k1 = 3,
k2 = 6. The security analysis results of proposed algorithm are
shown in Fig. 4. It can be seen from Fig. 4 that if one of the keys
is incorrect, the correct recognizable watermark cannot be recov-
ered. Obviously, the more wrong keys are provided, the quality of
extracted watermark is worse. The correct watermark can be ex-
tracted only when all keys are correct. Therefore, the security of
proposed watermarking algorithm is high.
Next, the reliability of the watermarking algorithm proposed
in this paper is explained, that is, whether this algorithm has
the false positive problem (FPP). In order to avoid FPP, in the
proposed algorithm, we embed the right principal component of
the watermark instead of the singular value into the host image.
Moreover, pixel scrambling and DFRNT are used to encrypt the
sub-watermarks before further processing them. Therefore, in the
process of watermark extraction, the extracted watermark needs
to be decrypted to obtain the real watermark. In this part, we use
three types of FPP attacks to verify the reliability of the proposed
watermarking algorithm, and Fig. 5 shows the test results. For a
detailed description of these three attacks, please refer to [43]. As
can be seen from Fig. 5, the identifiable watermarks cannot be ex-
tracted under all three ambiguity attacks, indicating that there is
no FPP in the proposed algorithm. Therefore, our algorithm has re-
liability.
4.3. Robustness analysis
The robustness of proposed algorithm is evaluated in terms of
various image processing and geometric attacks. Firstly, according
to the proposed algorithm, the cameraman watermark is embed-
ded into the host images shown in Fig. 3 (a-h). Then the wa-
termarked images are degraded by various attacks, and the wa-
8 L. Zhang, D. Wei / Digital Signal Processing 106 (2020) 102805

Fig. 4. Security analysis of the proposed algorithm based on keys (a-e) Watermarks extracted when one of the five keys is incorrect (f) Watermark extracted when all provided
keys are correct.

Table 5
NC values of the Cameraman watermarks extracted from different images by the proposed algorithm under various attacks.

Attack Couple House Splash Zelda Airplane Lena MRI X-ray

JPEG compression (QF = 10) 0.9994 0.9998 0.9990 0.9990 0.9993 0.9989 0.9998 0.9985
Speckle noise 0.03 0.9991 0.9992 0.9965 0.9994 0.9979 0.9993 0.9879 0.9925
Gaussian noise 0.03 0.9975 0.9964 0.9942 0.9930 0.9896 0.9942 0.9871 0.9917
Salt & pepper noise 0.03 0.9977 0.9973 0.9983 0.9923 0.9918 0.9961 0.9894 0.9901
Gamma correction 0.9 0.9985 0.9968 0.9958 0.9997 0.9897 0.9948 0.9999 0.9997
Wiener filtering 3 × 3 1 0.9999 1 1 1 1 0.9998 0.9993
Mean filtering 3 × 3 0.9995 0.9997 0.9999 0.9999 0.9994 0.9998 0.9997 0.9994
Gaussian low pass filtering 3 × 3 1 0.9999 1 1 1 1 0.9999 0.9993
Median filtering 3 × 3 1 0.9999 1 1 0.9996 1 0.9998 0.9993
Scaling (0.125, 8) 0.9995 0.9975 0.9981 0.9997 0.9978 0.9990 0.9986 0.9998
Rotate 90◦ 0.9999 0.9999 0.9997 0.9999 0.9995 0.9999 0.9998 0.9998
Translation (50,50) 0.9842 0.9813 0.9876 0.9903 0.9869 0.9752 0.9990 0.9983
Cropping 50 pixels each side 0.9738 0.9756 0.9849 0.9855 0.9698 0.9843 0.9927 0.9962
Sharpen 0.9821 0.9893 0.9870 0.9750 0.9914 0.9795 0.9983 0.9925
Flip by row 0.9999 0.9998 0.9997 1 0.9994 1 0.9998 0.9997
Flip by column 0.9999 0.9999 0.9996 0.9999 0.9995 0.9998 0.9998 0.9999

termarks are extracted from the damaged watermarked images. Table 6

The NC values between the extracted Cameraman watermarks and NC values of the watermarks extracted from the degraded Splash watermarked im-
ages by the proposed scheme when tested with three watermarks.
original watermark are calculated and given in Table 5. Moreover,
the NC values of the watermarks extracted under different attacks Attack Cameraman QR code Fingerprint
when tested with the Splash host image and the three watermark JPEG compression (QF = 10) 0.9990 0.9988 0.9994
images are given in Table 6. In addition, Table 7 shows the test re- Speckle noise 0.03 0.9965 0.9987 0.9975
sults for multiple attacks. In order to more intuitively illustrate the Gaussian noise 0.03 0.9942 0.9962 0.9964
Salt & pepper noise 0.03 0.9983 0.9957 0.9974
robustness of our algorithm, the degraded Splash watermarked im-
Gamma correction 0.9 0.9958 0.9983 0.9969
ages and the watermarks extracted from them are shown in Fig. 6. Wiener filtering 3 × 3 1 0.9997 0.9999
From Fig. 6, we can find that the extracted watermark has a high Mean filtering 3 × 3 0.9999 0.9998 0.9997
similarity with original watermark when the image is subjected Gaussian low pass filtering 3 × 3 1 1 0.9999
to JPEG compression with a quality factor of 10. When 50 pixels Median filtering 3 × 3 1 0.9997 0.9999
Scaling (0.125, 8) 0.9981 0.9989 0.9994
on each side of the watermarked image are cropped, a watermark Rotate 90◦ 0.9997 0.9996 0.9998
with NC value of 0.9849 can still be extracted. As shown in Ta- Translation (50,50) 0.9876 0.9927 0.9915
ble 5, the proposed algorithm also shows good robustness for the Cropping 50 pixels each side 0.9849 0.9834 0.9887
other seven test images, and the NC values are all higher than Sharpen 0.9870 0.9912 0.9881
Flip by row 0.9997 0.9996 0.9999
0.969. To sum up, the proposed algorithm shows strong robust-
Flip by column 0.9996 0.9998 0.9995
ness for common attacks. Furthermore, the last column of Table 8
shows the average NC values of the watermarks extracted when
testing with all eight host images and three watermark images un-
der various attacks. According to Tables 5–8, we can conclude that
the algorithm proposed in this paper has strong robustness against gorithm can still extract the watermark with average NC value of
common attacks and multi-attacks. Moreover, it shows good per- 0.9997. In summary, the proposed algorithm is obviously superior
formance for different types of host images and watermark images.
to the existing related algorithms in robustness.
In order to further demonstrate the effectiveness of the pro-
In the proposed watermarking algorithm, we downsample both
posed algorithm, it is compared with existing algorithms [19,20,
the host image and watermark image, and embed each sub-
38,39,43,45]. Based on the algorithm proposed in Section 3.1 and
watermark into the corresponding sub-host image. In this way, the
algorithms [19,20,38,39,43,45], the watermarks given in Fig. 3 (i-k)
watermark information is dispersed throughout the watermarked
are hidden in the host images shown in (a-h) respectively, and Ta-
ble 8 shows the average NC values of watermarks extracted under image, which improves the robustness of the watermarking algo-
different attacks. By observing Table 8, we can draw a conclusion rithm. In addition, we perform two-level singular value decomposi-
that in all sixteen attacks, except for 90-degree rotation, flip by row tion and block cosine transform on the wavelet sub-bands of host
and column three cases, the NC values of the watermarks extracted image and watermark respectively. Moreover, we choose the low
by our algorithm are higher than other six algorithms, especially in and high frequency of the host image to embed the watermark to
noise, scaling and translation attacks. When the watermarked im- achieve the double embedding of the watermark. Since these two
age is first reduced to 1/8 of the original image, then enlarged to parts can resist different attacks, the double embedding makes the
the original size. The average NC values of watermarks extracted algorithm show better robustness against common image process-
by [19,20,38,39,43] and [45] are all less than 0.9. However, our al- ing attacks and geometric attacks.
 L. Zhang, D. Wei / Digital Signal Processing 106 (2020) 102805 9

Fig. 5. Reliability test results of the proposed watermarking algorithm with three types of FPP attacks.
10 L. Zhang, D. Wei / Digital Signal Processing 106 (2020) 102805

Table 7
NC values of the cameraman watermarks extracted by the proposed algorithm under multiple attacks.

Multiple attacks Couple House Splash Zelda Airplane Lena MRI X-ray
Sharpen + Salt & pepper noise 0.1 0.9641 0.9739 0.9714 0.9682 0.9659 0.9656 0.9631 0.9658
Speckle noise 0.05 + Flip by row 0.9946 0.9947 0.9870 0.9954 0.9794 0.9954 0.9657 0.9780
Scaling (0.125, 8) + Median filtering 9 × 9 0.9951 0.9906 0.9915 0.9951 0.9926 0.9937 0.9934 0.9960
Wiener filtering 3 × 3+ Randomly delete 25 0.9669 0.9822 0.9634 0.9647 0.9686 0.9688 0.9871 0.9626
rows
JPEG compression (QF = 50) + Scaling (2, 0.5) 0.9662 0.9801 0.9770 0.9752 0.9602 0.9681 0.9923 0.9622
+ Translation (20,20)
Gaussian noise 0.03 + Flip by column + 0.9589 0.9670 0.9752 0.9609 0.9690 0.9652 0.9639 0.9680
Cropping 30 pixels each side

Fig. 6. Degraded splash watermarked images and the extracted watermarks.

 L. Zhang, D. Wei / Digital Signal Processing 106 (2020) 102805 11

Table 8
Robustness comparison between the proposed watermarking algorithm and existing algorithms based on average NC values.

Attack Hurrah et al. Zhou et al. Makbol et al. Ansari et al. Makbol et al. Arunkumar Proposed
[19] [20] [38] [39] [43] et al. [45] algorithm
No attack 1 0.9952 1 1 1 0.9987 1
JPEG compression (QF = 10) 0.9921 0.8357 0.9942 0.9934 0.9611 0.7325 0.9993
Speckle noise 0.03 0.9058 0.9275 0.9131 0.9516 0.9785 0.7698 0.9972
Gaussian noise 0.03 0.8567 0.8685 0.8476 0.8926 0.9608 0.8132 0.9934
Salt & pepper noise 0.03 0.9143 0.9338 0.9222 0.9434 0.9776 0.7913 0.9952
Gamma correction 0.9 0.9675 0.8688 0.9966 0.9989 0.9890 0.9251 0.9979
Wiener filtering 3 × 3 0.9786 0.9613 0.9904 0.9968 0.9897 0.9687 0.9997
Mean filtering 3 × 3 0.9650 0.9462 0.9799 0.9719 0.9801 0.9679 0.9998
Gaussian low pass filtering 3 × 3 0.9997 0.9986 0.9923 0.9920 0.9884 0.9731 0.9999
Median filtering 3 × 3 0.9669 0.9526 0.9897 0.9873 0.9936 0.9754 0.9996
Scaling (0.125, 8) 0.8484 0.7549 0.8929 0.8695 0.8734 0.7327 0.9997
Rotate 90◦ 0.9892 0.7778 1 0.9999 0.9968 0.9963 0.9996
Translation (50,50) 0.8621 0.8521 0.9802 0.9597 0.8652 0.8452 0.9875
Cropping 50 pixels each side 0.9285 0.8074 0.9338 0.9612 0.9592 0.9186 0.9838
Sharpen 0.9752 0.8804 0.9503 0.9555 0.8749 0.8825 0.9882
Flip by row 0.9766 0.8881 1 1 0.9970 0.9361 0.9998
Flip by column 0.9753 0.8967 1 1 0.9972 0.9280 0.9998

Table 9
Capacity comparison between the proposed scheme and related schemes.

Metric Hurrah et al. [19] Zhou et al. [20] Makbol et al. [38] Ansari et al. [39] Makbol et al. [43] Arunkumar et al. [45] Proposed algorithm
Host image size 512 × 512 × 8 512 × 512 × 8 512 × 512 × 8 512 × 512 × 8 512 × 512 × 8 512 × 512 × 8 512 × 512 × 8
Watermark size 64 × 64 × 1 32 × 32 × 8 256 × 256 × 8 256 × 256 × 8 256 × 256 × 8 256 × 256 × 8 512 × 512 × 8
Capacity 0.001953125 0.00390625 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 1

4.4. Capacity analysis
The capacity analysis of the proposed watermarking algorithm
is given in this part. In this section, the ratio of the bits number in
the maximum embeddable watermark image to the bits number in
the host image is used to evaluate the capacity of the algorithm.
For the proposed algorithm, after performing the operations in Sec-
tion 3.1 on the 512 × 512 host image, the 32 × 32 singular value
matrix is used for embedding watermark. Because the watermark
image also needs to be processed before being embedded into the
host image, it can be seen that the maximum watermark that can
be embedded is 512 × 512. Therefore, the capacity of our algorithm
is (512 × 512 × 8)/(512 × 512 × 8) = 1. Similarly, the capacity of re-
lated algorithms [19,20,38,39,43,45] can be calculated, and Table 9
gives the specific capacity comparison. According to Table 9, we
can see that the capacity of the proposed algorithm is 1, that is, a
watermark of the same size as the host image can be embedded in
512 × 512 host image. Moreover, the capacity of our algorithm is
512, 256, 4, 4, 4 and 4 times larger than [19,20,38,39,43] and [45],
respectively. It shows that our algorithm has obvious advantages in
terms of capacity.
In the algorithm presented in this paper, since the host im-
age and watermark image are all subsampled to obtain four
sub-watermarks and sub-host images, and then the four sub-
watermarks are embedded in the corresponding sub-host images
respectively, so that the capacity of the algorithm is improved.
The proposed algorithm is verified by simulation based on invisi-
bility, security, robustness and capacity. The results show that this
algorithm has good invisibility, high capacity and strong robust-
ness. Moreover, if the provided keys are not completely correct, the
extracted watermark is a meaningless noise image, thus ensuring
the security of proposed watermarking algorithm. Furthermore, the
proposed algorithm is superior to the existing related algorithms.
Therefore, this algorithm can be used for copyright protection of
digital images.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by the National Natural Sci-
ence Foundation of China under Grant 61971328, the Natural Sci-
ence Foundation of Shaanxi Province under Grant 2018JM6044, the
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and the
Innovation Fund of Xidian University.
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Lina Zhang received the B.S. degree from Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang,
China, in 2017. Now, she is pursuing the Master’s degree with the School
of Mathematics and Statistics, Xidian University, Xi’an, China. She majored
in computational mathematics and her research direction is information
security, mainly including digital watermarking and image encryption. She
won the second prize of the National College Student Mathematics Com-
petition and the third prize of the National College Student Mathematical
Modeling Competition.
Deyun Wei received the B.S. degree from Qufu Normal University,
Qufu, China, in 2006, the M.S. degree in applied mathematics and the
Ph.D. degree in Physical Electronics from Harbin Institute of Technology,
Harbin, China, in 2008 and 2012. Now he is an associate professor with
the School of mathematics and Statistics, Xidian University, Xi’an, China.
His research interests include time-frequency analysis, image processing,
sampling theory. He has over 40 refereed journal articles published. He
was a recipient of the 2016 IET Signal Processing Premium Awards. He
served as Editorial Board Member for Signal Processing: An International
Journal (SPIJ).