Open Access

ARTICLE

Modified Watermarking Scheme Using Informed Embedding and Fuzzy c-Means–Based Informed Coding

Jyun-Jie Wang¹, Yin-Chen Lin¹, Chi-Chun Chen^2,*

1 Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Chin-Yi University of Technology, Taichung, 41170, Taiwan
2 Department of Electronic Engineering, National Chin-Yi University of Technology, Taichung, 41170, Taiwan

* Corresponding Author: Chi-Chun Chen. Email:

Computers, Materials & Continua 2025, 85(3), 5595-5624. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2025.066160

Received 31 March 2025; Accepted 03 September 2025; Issue published 23 October 2025

Abstract

Digital watermarking must balance imperceptibility, robustness, complexity, and security. To address the challenge of computational efficiency in trellis-based informed embedding, we propose a modified watermarking framework that integrates fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering into the generation off block codewords for labeling trellis arcs. The system incorporates a parallel trellis structure, controllable embedding parameters, and a novel informed embedding algorithm with reduced complexity. Two types of embedding schemes—memoryless and memory-based—are designed to flexibly trade-off between imperceptibility and robustness. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms existing approaches in bit error rate (BER) and computational complexity under various attacks, including additive noise, filtering, JPEG compression, cropping, and rotation. The integration of FCM enhances robustness by increasing the codeword distance, while preserving perceptual quality. Overall, the proposed framework is suitable for real-time and secure watermarking applications.

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Keywords

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