Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-018-6322-9

Secure and robust watermark scheme based on multiple

transforms and particle swarm optimization algorithm

Nan Run Zhou 1 & An Wei Luo 1 & Wei Ping Zou 1,2

Received: 10 December 2017 / Revised: 12 May 2018 / Accepted: 25 June 2018 /

Published online: 10 July 2018
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract To improve the security, robustness and imperceptibility of watermark schemes, a

novel watermark scheme is devised by fusing multiple watermark techniques, including lifting
wavelet transform, discrete cosine transform, discrete fractional angular transform and singular
value decomposition. To solve the false positive problem in various SVD-based watermark
schemes, transform domain encryption is utilized and the embedding component of watermark
instead of the whole watermark is embedded into the host image. Furthermore, the particle
swarm optimization algorithm is used to optimize the scaling factors and the parameter of the
improved discrete fractional angular transform. The proposed watermark scheme is tested by
several attacks, such as JPEG compression, low-pass filtering, Histogram equalization, con-
trast enhance, and etc. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed watermark scheme is
superior in the aspects of security, robustness and imperceptibility.

Keywords Lifting wavelet transform . Discrete cosine transform . Discrete fractional angular
transform . Singular value decomposition . False positive problem . Particle swarm
optimization algorithm

1 Introduction

The development of network technology and multimedia in various applications has greatly
stimulated the demand on digital products. With the digital product applications increasing,
numerous problems of illegal copying, distribution, editing have been exposed [2, 27]. To solve
these problems, a number of watermarking technologies have been designed. As a successful
watermarking scheme, three important characteristics, i.e., robustness, imperceptibility and
security, must be mainly considered [20]. That is to say, the embedded watermark should be

* Nan Run Zhou

nrzhou@ncu.edu.cn

1
Department of Electronic Information Engineering, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, China
2
XLIM (UMR CNRS 7252), University of Poitiers, Poitiers, France
2508 Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523

difficult to perceive by human visual system (HVS) and the extracted watermark can be
recognized after decryption while the host image is attacked. Because of these characteristics,
the watermarking technology is superior to traditional property protection technology.
Since the inception of digital watermark around the early 1990s, a variety of watermark
methods have been put forward [30]. According to the embedding domain, current
watermarking methods can be sorted as spatial domain schemes and transform domain schemes
[23]. Watermarking methods in spatial domain have low computational complexity, while they
are vulnerable to some attacks since only the pixel values are modified [32]. Watermarking
schemes based on transform domain usually take advantage of several common transforms,
such as discrete wavelet transform (DWT) [9, 13], discrete cosine transform (DCT) [9, 21],
discrete Fourier transform (DFT) [3, 16], etc. Generally, though each transform has its own
contributions to resist attacks, a majority of these watermarking schemes in transform domain
combine two or more transforms together to achieve better effects. J B Li et al. proposed a
multiple watermarks embedding scheme by combining DWT with DFT, whose coefficients
were used as feature vector to improve the robustness [15]. H T Hu et al. put forward a
collective blind image watermarking method in DWT-DCT domain with adaptive embedding
strength governed by quality metrics [9]. Furthermore, several new watermarking schemes
based on other transforms have been come out. B Kazemivash et al. invented a robust digital
image watermarking technique based on lifting wavelet transform (LWT) [12]. J Guo et al.
studied a novel watermark scheme based on discrete fractional random transform (DFRNT),
where the random block selection and high amplitude selection techniques were employed to
enhance the robustness [8]. These DFRNT based schemes could improve the resistance to
several attacks including low-pass filtering, noise, etc. Z J Liu et al. came up with the discrete
fractional angular transform (DFAT), which is derived from DFRNT with less computational
costs [19]. Besides, T N Tan et al. designed a SVD-based watermarking scheme to protect
rightful ownership [18]. The anti-attack ability can be enhanced by embedding watermark into
the singular value [14, 25, 37]. Inspired by these mentioned watermarking algorithms, a novel
watermarking scheme based on LWT-DCT-DFAT-SVD is devised.
The rest parts are arranged as follows. The drawbacks and solutions of SVD-based watermark
methods are presented in Section 2. The detailed watermarking algorithm and its experiment results
are given in Section 3 and Section 4, respectively. Finally, a brief conclusion is discussed in Section 5.

2 Discussion on SVD-based watermark schemes

2.1 Singular value decomposition

According to singular value decomposition (SVD) [11], a rectangular matrix A can be

represented as
A ¼ USVT ; ð1Þ
where A is an M × N matrix, U and V are two orthonormal matrices. S is a diagonal matrix
composed of the singular values of A. The singular values S1 ≥ S2 ≥ … ≥ Sn ≥ 0 appear in the
descending order along with the main diagonal of matrix S. SVD has two important and
powerful properties for watermarking schemes: Singular values represent the intrinsic alge-
braic image properties and the singular values of an image have very good stability [28]. If a
small perturbation is added to an image, its singular values will not be changed significantly.
Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523 2509

2.2 Shortcomings of SVD-based watermarking schemes

Although SVD-based algorithms perform well in image processing, two apparent defects must
be pointed out: (1) The watermarked images usually have lower imperceptibility, since all the
pixel values will be changed even if one singular value is modified [29]. (2) Due to the
unchangeable property of S, most SVD-based watermarking schemes embedded the water-
marks into S. Thus the false positive problem (FPP) cannot be avoided. To explain the FPP in
these schemes, two common watermark embedding styles are shown below, and then the root
of the problem will be clarified.

(1) Suppose S is the singular value matrix of the host image, U and V are the eigen matrices
corresponding to S, W is the watermark. One can embed the watermark as follows [26]:

S þ aW⇒Uww Sww VTww ; ð2Þ

W* ¼ USww VT : ð3Þ

where Uww, Sww and VTww are the results of singular value decomposition, W∗ is the
watermarked result, a represents the singular embedding factor.

(2) Let Sw be the singular value matrix of the watermark, then another form to embed the
watermark can be expressed as [1]:

S*w ¼ S þ aSw ; ð4Þ

W* ¼ US*w VT : ð5Þ

where S*w is the watermarked matrix of singular values.

It is pointed out that the addition of singular values S to a scaled down version of watermark
would result in a slightly modified watermark, whose sub-spaces differ from that of the
original watermark only along the diagonal elements [39]. If an attacker makes full use of
the eigen matrices of an arbitrary image, a similar arbitrary image can be obtained by
performing the extraction operation to the watermarked image. So the attacker can state the
ownership with this false image.

2.3 Solutions to the false positive problem

Several solutions have been proposed to settle the false positive problem (FPP). Z Zhang et al.
presented a method by applying Arnold transform on the watermark before it was embedded into
the host image [40]. K Loukhaoukha et al. suggested an optimal watermarking algorithm based
on LWT-SVD via multi-objective ant colony optimization. To avoid the FPP, a one-way Hash
function was applied on Uw and Vw, which are the singular vectors of W [22]. These mentioned
methods can solve the FPP to some degree, but the essence of the FPP is that the eigen matrices
preserve most information of an image. Thus a reliable SVD-based watermarking scheme was
raised by choosing UwSw instead of W as the embedding component [10].
2510 Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523

Besides the FPP in SVD-based watermarking schemes, the watermarks are always embedded
with a singular scaling factor (SSF) a, in which a is a significant parameter for the robustness and
imperceptibility of the images. Since the embedding strength in various watermark schemes is
single, another important problem is exposed that the singular scaling factor may be not suitable
for all the parts in the host image. Accordingly, R S Run et al. firstly proposed an improved
SVD-based watermarking technique for copyright protection, in which SSF is replaced by
multiple scaling factors (MSF) with particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm [24]. Moti-
vated by this idea, many optimization algorithms and deep learning algorithms [4, 5, 33, 34]
have been introduced into image processing [6, 35, 36] and even watermarking schemes.

3 Watermarking scheme based on multiple transforms and PSO algorithm

3.1 An improved DFAT method

In the scheme, DFAT is utilized to enhance the robustness and security with its parameters α
and β. Different from watermark encryption, this method is applied on the transform domain
coefficients of the host image directly. Thus the pirates cannot detect the right watermark if
they only try to decrypt the watermark. The definition of DFAT is given in [19], since the
parameter α in transform operation would mainly impact the extracted result, an improved
DFAT scheme is considered by changing the eigenvalues of DFAT:


  
−i2πα −i4πα −2ðN −1Þiπα
λαN ¼ 1; exp ; exp ; …; exp ð6Þ
T T T
where T represents the period. The purpose of the improved algorithm is to enhance the security
with the variable parameter α while keeping the robustness of the watermark. Thus if the
transform domain coefficients are encrypted by a random value of α, T will be set as 2α. This
operation makes sure that the eigenvalues of DFAT are real and invariable, that is to say, the result
would contain imaginary number part if the values of T and α do not match, so the watermark
cannot be extracted correctly. For example, T is set to 0.2468, the encrypted watermark can only
be decrypted when α is equal to 0.1234. Conversely, β is less sensitive than α, thus it is not
necessary to utilize β as the secret key [38]. β is a parameter of the eigenvectors in the kernel
matrix and can impact the robustness of the watermark. Thus β is selected as the optimal value
with particle swarm optimization algorithm, and the detail is discussed below.

3.2 PSO algorithm

In the scheme, the optimal values of a (MSF) and β are obtained with PSO algorithm, respectively.

(1) To acquire the optimal value of a, Uw is utilized to replace UwSw to be the embedding
component. Since the elements of Uw are much smaller than those of UwSw, the range of the
search space can be set much larger. In the experiment, the range is limited from 50 to 300.

The objective function is built as:

  
1 R 
max ∑t¼1 ηt *NC W; W*t *½η*PSNRðIo ; Iw Þ ð7Þ
R
Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523 2511

where W and W*t represent original watermark and extracted watermark under different
attacks, respectively. R is the number of tested attacks. Io and Iw represent original image
and watermarked image. ηt and η are the weight coefficients.

(2) The operation to select β is similar as a. For the reason that JPEG compression impacts
the result much more than other attacks, only the resistance to JPEG compression is
considered in the experiment. The search space of β is limited from 0 to 2π.

3.3 Watermark embedding algorithm

The watermark embedding algorithm is shown in Fig. 1 and includes the following steps.
Step.1 The host image I is decomposed into four sub-bands LL, LH, HL and HH by
applying LWT.

½LL; LH; HL; HH ¼ LWTðIÞ ð8Þ

Step.2 HH is divided into 8 × 8 non-overlapping blocks. Then DCT is executed on each

block, and upper left coefficient of each block is selected to form a new matrix Ih.
Step.3 Ie is obtained by performing DFAT on Ih with α and β. Then SVD is applied on Ie.

Ie ¼ DFATðIh ; α; β Þ ð9Þ

Ie ⇒Ub Sb VTb ð10Þ

Step.4 The original watermark W is encrypted by Arnold transform with the iteration
times N, then SVD is applied on the encryption watermark We.

We ⇒Uw Sw VTw ð11Þ

where Sw VTw is regarded as the secret key.

Step.5 Se is obtained by modifying Sb with a. ∗ Uw, then Ic can be obtained with Ub and VTb .

Se ¼ Sb þ a:*Uw ð12Þ

Ic ¼ Ub *Se *VTb ð13Þ

where a obtained by PSO algorithm is the optical scaling factor.

Step.6 Ir is obtained by operating IDFAT on Ic.

Ir ¼ IDFATðIc ; −α; β Þ ð14Þ

Step.7 Ir is returned to each block, and the new HH1 is obtained by applying IDCT on
each block. Then the watermarked image Iw is obtained by ILWT.
2512 Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523

Fig. 1 Watermark embedding

3.4 Watermark extraction algorithm

The extraction process as shown in Fig. 2 requires Ie.

Step.1 The watermarked image I*w is decomposed into four sub-bands LL∗, LH∗, HL∗
and HH∗ by applying LWT.

 
LL* ; LH* ; HL* ; HH* ¼ LWT I*w ð15Þ

Step.2 HH∗ is divided into 8 × 8 non-overlapping blocks. Then DCT is applied on each
block, and upper left coefficient of each block is selected to form a new matrix I*h .

Step.3 By applying DFAT on I*h with α and β, I*e as well as I*u can be acquired.


I*e ¼ DFAT I*h ; α; β ð16Þ

I*u ¼ I*e −Ie ð17Þ

Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523 2513

Fig. 2 Watermark extraction

Step.4 Ub and Vb are obtained by performing SVD on Ie, then U*w can be obtained.

Ie ⇒Ub Sb Vb ð18Þ
h  −1 i
U*w ¼ ðUb Þ−1 *I*u * VTb =a ð19Þ

Step.5 The encryption image W*e is obtained with Sw *VTw , then the watermark can be
obtained by applying Arnold transform on W*e .

W*e ¼ U*w *Sw *VTw ð20Þ

4 Experimental results and analysis

4.1 Theory analysis

The proposed watermarking scheme combined multiple transforms together, and each transform
contributes to the algorithm: LWT is utilized to divide the image into four sub-bands [31]. The
approximate sub-band contains the main information of the image, in which the watermark
embedded into this sub-band has good performance against lossy compression and high frequen-
cy filtering. However, the embedding capacity is low and too much watermark information will
cause visual distortion to the image. On the contrary, another way with the detail sub-band is also
called high frequency component to hide the watermark. This method exhibits high ability against
noise attacks and cutting, while the performance of anti-compression is poor. For the
2514 Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523

imperceptibility purpose, the watermark should be embedded into the high energy parts of the
detail sub-band. Thus DCT is used to concentrate the energy of the detail sub-band in the low and
middle frequency parts suitable to hide the watermark. Besides, since watermarking schemes
based on DCT show good performance against lossy compression, DCT in the proposed
watermarking algorithm can make up the weak anti-compression ability to some extent. In terms
of security, DFAT is mainly utilized to encrypt the coefficients in transform domain. Similar to the
discrete fraction Fourier transform (DFrFT), DFAT can map the original coefficients to other
coordinates with different angles. While the transformed coefficients may be more robust in some
directions, it is necessary to find the optimal direction. From the mathematical analysis, the
transform is derived from kernel matrix, and kernel matrix is made up of eigenvalues and
eigenvectors. Since the eigenvalues in the improved DFAT is invariable and the eigenvectors
are determined by parameter β, PSO algorithm is employed to optimize the value of β. To further
enhance the robustness, SVD is utilized in the proposed watermarking scheme. The merits and
the shortcoming of the SVD-based watermarking scheme are discussed in detail in Section 2.
Finally, a suitable embedding factor is important to the robustness and imperceptibility. Trial and
error is not a sensible method to find the value, thus PSO algorithm is adopted to search for the
optimal value to balance robustness and imperceptibility.

4.2 Experiment results

In the experiment, the grey-scale image BBaboon^ with 512 ∗ 512 pixels and BWoman^ with 512
∗ 512 pixels are regarded as host images, and the grey-scale image with 32 ∗ 32 pixels is regarded
as watermark. The secret key α is set to 0.1234 as an example, and the values of the optimal

Fig. 3 Test images: a-d test image BBaboon^, a original image, b watermark, c watermarked image, d extracted
watermark. e-f test image BWoman^, e original image, f watermark, g watermarked image, h extracted watermark
Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523 2515

Fig. 4 Security test (1): a α=0.2468, b α=0.1345, c α=0.1234

parameter β obtained by PSO algorithm are 3.8776 and 4.5357, respectively. Peak signal-to-noise
ratio (PSNR) and normalized correlation (NC) are used to be the assessment means. While PSNR
shows the imperceptibility of the watermark, and NC evaluates the robustness of the extracted
watermark. The PSNR can be defined as:
max½xðl; k Þ2
PSNR ¼ 10lg ð21Þ
MSE
where max[x(l, k)] is the maximum possible pixel value in the image. The mean square error
(MSE) between the original image Io and the watermarked image Iw can be defined as:
1 1 m n
1
MSE ¼ ∑ ∑½Io ði; jÞ−Iw ði; jÞ2 ð22Þ
m1 n1 i¼1 j¼1

where m1 and n1 are the image dimensions.

NC is defined as:
m2 n 2
∑ ∑ ½Wo ðp; qÞ−μo ½We ðp; qÞ−μe 
p¼1 q¼1
NCðWo ; We Þ ¼ sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffisffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
m2 n 2 m2 n2
ð23Þ
∑ ∑ ½Wo ðp; qÞ−μo 2 ∑ ∑ ½We ðp; qÞ−μe 2
p¼1 q¼1 p¼1 q¼1

where m2 and n2 are the watermark dimensions, Wo and We are the original watermark and
extracted watermark, respectively. μo and μe are the mean of Wo and the mean of We,

Fig. 5 Security test (2): a false watermark, b extracted watermark with false secret key from (a), c extracted
watermark with correct secret key
2516 Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523

Fig. 6 Robustness tests (1): a–c Salt and Pepper noise attacks with different intensities: a σ = 0.01, b σ = 0.05, c
σ = 0.1. d–e Gaussian noise attacks with different intensities: d σ = 0.005, e σ = 0.01. f Multiplicative noise attack
with the intensity: σ = 0.03

respectively. The range of NC value is from 0 to 1, and a high NC value indicates the high
similarity between Wo and We. If NC is equal to 1, Wo and We are identical.
In Fig. 3 the results of test images in the experiment are shown without attacks. For image
BBaboon^, PSNR is 44.0828 and NC is 0.9994. For image BWoman^, PSNR is 42.2268 and
NC is 0.9991. Generally, if PSNR is more than 40, the imperceptibility can be guaranteed.

4.3 Security analysis

To show the security effects, two experiments are executed as follows.

(1) The false receiver has all the key except the secret key α, so random value of α is used to
decrypt the watermark. The comparison between correct key and false one is shown in Fig. 4.

(2) The false receiver has all the key except the secret key Sw *VTw, so the false key S f *VTf of
the false watermark which is showed in Fig. 5a is used to decrypt the watermark.

Fig. 7 Results (1): Extracted watermarks corresponding to (a)-(f)

Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523 2517

Fig. 8 Robustness tests (2): a JPEG compression (75%), b Lowpass filtering, c Histogram equalization, d Image
brightening, e Image darkening, f Contrast enhancement, g Contrast weakness, h Quarter cutting, i Half cutting

4.4 Robustness test

To verify the robustness, several common attacks have been tested in the experiment. First,
Salt and Pepper noise attacks with different intensities have been added. The attacked images
are shown in Fig. 6a-c. Another usual noise is Gaussian noise, and the corresponding results
are shown in Fig. 6d–e. The result under multiplicative noise attack is shown in Fig. 6f. The
extracted watermarks are shown in Fig. 7a–f. These results illustrate that the extracted

Fig. 9 Results: (a)-(i) are the extracted watermarks corresponding to (a)-(i)

2518 Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523

Table 1 NC values of proposed method with MSF and different single scaling factors

Attack 100 160 MSF

Baboon Baboon Baboon
Woman Woman Woman

No attack 0.9981 0.9991 0.9994

0.9985 0.9990 0.9991
JPEG compression (75%) 0.7846 0.9031 0.9524
0.7247 0.9057 0.9431
Lowpass filtering 0.9980 0.9992 0.9993
0.9985 0.9990 0.9991
Histogram equalization 0.9452 0.9613 0.9738
0.9806 0.9810 0.9794
Image brightening 0.9779 0.9855 0.9872
0.9848 0.9871 0.9881
Image darkening 0.9777 0.9855 0.9871
0.9849 0.9871 0.9881
Contrast enhancement 0.9565 0.9696 0.9791
0.9648 0.9705 0.9752
Contrast weakness 0.9775 0.9856 0.9869
0.9850 0.9871 0.9881
Gaussian noise (0.005) 0.9082 0.9525 0.9804
0.9177 0.9598 0.9803
Gaussian noise (0.01) 0.8273 0.9013 0.9676
0.8422 0.9205 0.9455
Salt and Pepper noise (0.01) 0.9476 0.9765 0.9863
0.9301 0.9745 0.9809
Salt and Pepper noise (0.05) 0.7529 0.8721 0.9375
0.7172 0.8856 0.9222
Salt and Pepper noise (0.1) 0.7037 0.7948 0.8634
0.6281 0.7834 0.8563
Multiplicative noise (0.03) 0.8189 0.9022 0.9394
0.8086 0.8951 0.9308
Quarter cutting 0.9229 0.9248 0.9417
0.9593 0.9573 0.9584
Half cutting 0.8315 0.8459 0.8564
0.8709 0.8800 0.8891

watermark can still be identified although the quality of the extracted watermark decreases
under several noise attacks.
Besides, several image manipulations are also tested in Fig. 8a-i, the corresponding results
are shown in Fig. 9a-i. These tested attacks are often encountered in digital image processing,
although the values of NC drop to about 0.8, the watermarks are still identified with naked eye.

4.5 Comparison analysis

To show the effects of MSF, the comparative experiment results between MSF and different SSF
are exhibited in Table 1. For image BBaboon^, the PSNR values are 47.0627 and 43.0950 when

Table 2 NC values with different β under JPEG compression (75%)

β 0.1 0.5 1 2 3 Optimal value

Baboon 0.8979 0.9145 0.8901 0.9043 0.8997 0.9524

Woman 0.8226 0.8419 0.8209 0.8275 0.8403 0.9431
Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523 2519

Table 3 Comparison between proposed method and typical methods

Attack [7] [17] Proposed method

No attack 0.9981 0.9999 0.9994

JPEG compression (75%) 0.9884 0.9026 0.9524
Lowpass filtering 0.9980 0.9999 0.9993
Histogram equalization 0.9128 0.6129 0.9738
Image brightening 0.9281 0.9568 0.9872
Image darkening 0.9286 NAN 0.9871
Contrast enhancement 0.9501 0.6385 0.9791
Contrast weakness 0.9279 0.8518 0.9869
Gaussian noise (0.005) 0.9355 0.7519 0.9804
Gaussian noise (0.01) 0.8870 0.6754 0.9676
Salt and Pepper noise (0.01) 0.9596 0.8708 0.9863
Salt and Pepper noise (0.05) 0.8007 0.6261 0.9375
Salt and Pepper noise (0.1) 0.6590 0.5705 0.8634
Multiplicative noise (0.03) 0.8403 0.6339 0.9394
Quarter cutting 0.9007 0.3913 0.9417
Half cutting 0.7503 0.1158 0.8564

NAN represents the watermark unable to detect.

the corresponding SSF values are set as 100 and 160, respectively. While for image BWoman^, the
PSNR values are 47.0556 and 43.1062. Though the embedding intensity is higher than MSF
when SSF is 160, the results of MSF are better than SSF generally.
Table 2 shows the effects with different β. If the resistance to compression is mainly
considered, the results clarify that an optimal value of β is necessary for the robustness.
Table 3 shows the comparison results with several previous methods. Because the scheme in [7]
chose approximation sub-band to embed watermark, the resistance to JPEG compression is higher.
By considering the approximation sub-band is sensitive to HVS, the embedding factor must be small
to reach the imperceptible effect. In the experiment, the embedding factor is 0.3, the PSNR is 45.5903.
The watermarking scheme based on DFRNT was proposed in [17], and PSNR is 41.6339 with the
corresponding embedding factor 0.5. This method performs well in compression, filtering and so on,
but it does not perform well under other attacks. Finally, the results are shown in Table 3 and
Fig. 10, and the comparisons highlight the superior effects of the proposed watermarking method.

Fig. 10 The comparison results

2520 Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523

Table 4 Comparison of execution time between different methods (second)

Method Embedding time Extraction time Total time

[7] 0.061277 0.083705 0.144982

[17] 1.446802 0.701628 2.14843
Proposed method 0.392012 0.141866 0.533878

4.6 Execution time

Actually, the computational complexity of the proposed watermarking scheme in multiple

transform domains is relatively higher. Therefore, the transforms with less computational
complexity are utilized in the proposed watermarking algorithm: (1) LWT is the second
generation wavelets more efficient than DWT [31]. (2) Because the singular vectors of DFAT
are generated by simple recurrences, the computing speed is faster than DFrFT and DFRNT.
To compare the execution time, a computer with an octa-core CPU at 3.40GHZ, 8.00 GB
RAM, Win 7, MATLAB 7.11.0 (R2010b) is utilized. The results are shown in Table 4.

5 Conclusion

A novel watermarking scheme is designed with lifting wavelet transform, discrete cosine transform,
discrete fractional angular transform and singular value decomposition. The proposed watermarking
scheme is secure enough and the false positive problem is actually solved. The robustness and the
imperceptibility of the proposed watermarking scheme can be accepted. Besides, the particle swarm
optimizationalgorithmcontributes toenhancetheperformanceof theproposedwatermarkingscheme.

Acknowledgements This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.
61462061 and 61561033), the China Scholarship Council (Grant No. 201606825042), the Department of Human
Resources and Social Security of Jiangxi Province, the Major Academic Discipline and Technical Leader of
Jiangxi Province (Grant No. 20162BCB22011), and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province (Grant
No. 20171BAB202002).

Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

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Nan Run Zhou received his Ph.D in Communication & Information Systems from Shanghai Jiao Tong
University in 2005. Since 2006 he has served as one of the faculty members of Department of Electronic
Information Engineering, Nanchang University, where he is currently a Professor since 2010 and a Gang Jiang
Distinguished Professor since 2014. Dr. N.R. Zhou has been selected in the first or second rank of the BJiangxi
Province Baiqianwan Talent for the New Century^ Programme, the BYoung Scientist of Jiangxi Province
(Jinggang Star)^ and BGanpo Programme 555 for Outstanding Talent^, leading a team of researchers carrying
out cutting-edge research in the field of information security. He has published over 160 papers, in refereed
international conferences and journals.

An Wei Luo received his B.S. degree in Communication Engineering from Jilin University, China, in 2013. He
is currently a candidate for his master degree in Department of Electronic Information Engineering, Nanchang
University. His areas of interests are multimedia security and image encryption.
Multimed Tools Appl (2019) 78:2507–2523 2523

Wei Ping Zou received his master degree in 2012 from Nanchang University. Since 2012 he has served as one of
the faculty members of Nanchang University. He is currently a candidate for his Doctoral degree in University of
Poitiers, France. His research interests include multimedia security, image encryption and digital watermark.