FAULT DETECTION USING EMBEDDED WATERMARKS

• US 20100138730A1
• Filed: 05/06/2008
• Published: 06/03/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 05/10/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Magnolia Licensing LLC (IP Edge LLC)
• Original Assignee: Thomson Licensing (Vantiva SA)
• Inventors: Ramaswamy, Kumar, Olafsen, Are, Bloom, Jeffrey Adam
• Granted Patent: US 8,352,810 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/819
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0654 using network fault recovery ring fault isolation or reconfiguration in loop networks without recovery actions by a network management system H04L12/437
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0677 Localisation of faults
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/467 characterised by the embedded information being invisible, e.g. watermarking
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44008 involving operations for analysing video streams, e.g. detecting features or characteristics in the video stream arrangements characterised by components specially adapted for monitoring, identification or recognition of video in broadcast systems H04H60/59
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4425 Monitoring of client processing errors or hardware failure
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/443 OS processes, e.g. booting an STB, implementing a Java virtual machine in an STB or power management in an STB

Abstract

Detection of faults in a transmitted signal stream occurs by recovering, from the information stream, a water mark embedded in the stream prior to transmission. The embedded watermark has data characteristic of stream quality. Thereafter, the at least one watermark property is analyzed to detect faults in the received information stream.

Claims

1. A method comprising the steps of:

recovering, from a received information stream, a watermark embedded in the stream, the watermark having data that is characteristic of stream quality; and

analyzing the watermark to establish the quality of the received information stream.

2. The method according to claim 1 claim wherein the watermark data includes a program identifier that identifies a program within the information stream.

3. The method according to claim 2 wherein the analyzing step includes the step of comparing the program identifier to a reference program identifier.

4. The method according to claim 1 wherein the watermark data includes a sequential count which identifies a video frame in which the watermark data is embedded.

5. The method according to claim 4 wherein the analyzing step comprises the step of comparing the sequential count of successively recovered watermarks.

6. The method according to claim 2 wherein the watermark data further includes a sequential count which identifies a video frame in which the watermark data is embedded.

7. The method according to claim 6 wherein the analyzing step comprises the steps of:

(a) comparing the program identifier to a reference program identifier; and

(b) comparing the sequential count of successively recovered watermarks.

8. The method according to claim 1 wherein the watermark is recovered from a baseband portion of received information stream following compression transcoding of the stream.

9. The method according to claim 1 wherein the watermark is recovered from the received information stream prior to compression transcoding of the stream.

10. A method for communicating an information stream to a downstream receiver, comprising the step of

embedding in the information stream prior to transmission a watermark having data characteristic of stream quality.

11. Apparatus comprising:

a receiver for receiving an information stream having a watermark embedded in the stream, the watermark having data that is characteristic of stream quality;

a watermark detector for extracting the data from the watermark; and

a fault detector for analyzing the extracted data to detect whether a fault exists in the received information stream.

12. The apparatus according to claim according to claim 11 wherein the watermark data includes a program identifier that identifies a program within the information stream.

13. The apparatus according to claim 12 wherein the fault detector compares the program identifier to a reference program identifier.

14. The apparatus according to claim 11 wherein the watermark data includes a sequential count which identifies a video frame in which the watermark data is embedded.

15. The apparatus according to claim 14 wherein the fault detector compares the sequential count of successively recovered watermarks to determine if the sequential count has changed.

16. The apparatus according to claim 12 wherein the watermark data further includes a sequential count which identifies a video frame in which the watermark data is embedded.

17. The apparatus according to claim 16 wherein the fault detector compares program identifier to a reference program identifier, and compares the sequential count of successively recovered watermarks.