Analysis and design of watermarking algorithms for improved resistance to compression

We study the performance of robust digital watermarking approaches in the presence of lossy compression by introducing practical analysis methodologies. Correlation expressions between the embedded watermark and the extracted watermark are derived to determine the optimal watermarking domain to maximize data hiding rates for spread spectrum and quantization watermarking. It is determined both theoretically and through simulations that the embedding strategy, in addition to the transform used for lossy compression, dictate the optimal transform for watermarking. Through analytic comparisons, we develop a novel hybrid watermarking algorithm that exploits the best of both approaches for greater resilience to JPEG compression.