Watermarking: A Review of Software and Hardware Techniques

Watermarking is a well-known technique traditionally used in banknotes and other documents to discourage counterfeiting. It usually consists of semi-transparent symbols embedded on paper. Similar concepts were applied to digital audio-visual Intellectual Properties (IPs). Several researchers have investigated digital watermarking with various contributions, implemented on both software and hardware platforms. In 1990, the modern study of digital watermarking was started by Tanaka et al.. They suggested hiding information in multi-level dithered images as a form of secured military communications. Following that work, digital image watermarking arose, and recently the development of video watermarking algorithms became a growing field of research. Despite the fact that it is easier to implement a watermarking algorithm on a software platform, there is a strong motivation for a move towards hardware implementation. The hardware implementation offers several distinct advantages over the software implementation in terms low power, real-time, reliable and, secure watermarking systems.