An Efficient Digital Watermarking Scheme for Dynamic Estimation of Wireless Channel Condition

Abstract

This paper investigates the scope of an unconventional use of digital watermarking principle to blindly assess the quality of the multimedia signals through dynamic estimation of the status of the wireless channel. An algorithm of a fragile watermarking technique is proposed for digital image that can be extended to video signal applications by embedding watermark information in different frames. Fast Walsh transform becomes an effective choice to implement proposed fragile spread spectrum (SS) image watermarking scheme as it offers low processing noise at low quality compression, low loss of image information due to embedding, and low computation cost. Circuits for watermark embedding and decoding are developed that makes it suitable for such real time application. Performance of the algorithm is tested for QoS assessment of digital images when transmitted through mobile channel and also to mitigate the multipath propagation effect in Rayleigh and Rician fading environment