Optimized Digital Watermarking Functions for Streaming Data

• US 20100014705A1
• Filed: 01/20/2009
• Published: 01/21/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 11/19/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Digimarc Corporation
• Original Assignee: Digimarc Corporation
• Inventors: Gustafson, Ammon E., Lyons, Robert G.
• Granted Patent: US 7,957,552 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/100
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/005 Robust watermarking, e.g. average attack or collusion attack resistant
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2201/0051 Embedding of the watermark in the spatial domain
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2201/0052 Embedding of the watermark in the frequency domain
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2201/0061 Embedding of the watermark in each block of the image, e.g. segmented watermarking
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2201/0065 Extraction of an embedded watermark; Reliable detection

Abstract

A digital watermark detector comprises a memory buffer for receiving an incoming stream of data. The detector includes a registration module for determining registration of embedded data in blocks of the incoming stream of data, and logic for re-using the registration for subsequent blocks of the incoming stream of data to detect machine readable signals. Another digital watermark detector comprises a message reader for extracting message estimates from blocks of media signal data and a decoder for combining the extracted message estimates and decoding a message from the combined message elements. Another digital watermark detector comprises a memory buffer and pipelined watermark processor segments. The segments each perform a different watermark detector operation. These segments concurrently operate on different data segments of the block of data in a processing pipeline.

Claims

1. A digital watermark detector comprising:

a memory buffer for storing an incoming stream of data;

a registration module for determining registration of embedded data in blocks of the incoming stream of data; and

logic for re-using the registration for subsequent blocks of the incoming stream of data to detect machine readable signals.

2. The digital watermark detector of claim 1 wherein the registration module detects signal peaks to determine registration.

3. The digital watermark detector of claim 1 wherein the registration module detects a pattern of frequency components to determine registration.

4. The digital watermark detector of claim 1 including pipelined detector stages operable to perform pipelined processing of segments of data from the incoming stream of data.

5. The digital watermark detector of claim 1 wherein the stream comprises a stream of video.

6. A digital watermark detector comprising:

a memory buffer for storing a block of a data computed from a media signal; and

pipelined watermark processor segments, the segments each performing a different watermark detector operation in series;

the segments concurrently operating on different data segments of the block of data in a processing pipeline.

7. The digital watermark detector of claim 6 wherein the pipelined watermark processor segments perform a frequency domain transform on the block of data.

8. The digital watermark detector of claim 7 wherein the frequency domain transform comprises filtering and frequency domain transform stages.

9. The digital watermark detector of claim 6 wherein the pipelined watermark processor elements perform a 1-dimensional frequency domain transform.

10. A digital watermark detector comprising:

a message reader for extracting message estimates from blocks of media signal data;

a memory for storing the extracted message estimates; and

a decoder for combining the extracted message estimates and decoding a message from the combined message elements.

11. The digital watermark detector of claim 10 wherein the decoder combines the extracted message estimates by weighting the message estimates based on detection criteria.

12. The digital watermark detector of claim 10 wherein the decoder combines the extracted message estimates based on registration data determined from one or more blocks of the media signal.

13. The digital watermark detector of claim 10 wherein the decoder combines the extracted message estimates based on a measure of message accuracy.

14. The digital watermark detector of claim 10 wherein the decoder combines the extracted message estimates based on a measure of correlation.

15. The digital watermark detector of claim 10 wherein the decoder combines the extracted message estimates selectively for a subset of blocks that satisfy detection criteria.