Abstract
Quantization index modulation (QIM) is a commonly used steganography method exploiting redundancy in codebook quantization procedure of signal encoding. The feasibility of steganography based on QIM depends on codebook division algorithm which mainly determines embedding capacity, latency and complexity of embedding and extracting algorithm. A novel neighbor-index-division (NID) codebook division method with a simple and more security implementation for G.723.1 speech streams is proposed. Differing from existing complementary neighbor vertices (CNV) algorithm, NID divides neighbor-indexed codewords into separated sub-codebooks (partitions) combined with a suitable stego coding strategy. Moreover, NID method makes multiple division (k sub-codebooks, k ≥ 3) for one single codebook possible, thus increases embedding capacity. To take full advantage of the partitions especially for odd-numbered division, multi-ary coding strategy is introduced in embedding and extracting procedures. Experimental results demonstrate that proposed method has almost the same distortion compared with CNV in binary division condition but a much easier implementation and introduces flexible multiple division methods which is more suitable for practical covert communication applications. Further, by applying a commonly used COV(1, 3, 2) stego coding strategy, NID is able to resist the state-of-art steganalysis towards QIM with a still practical embedding rate.
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Acknowledgments
The work described in this paper is supported in part by Natural Science Foundation of China (61302094, 61572206 and U1405254), Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province of China (2014J01238), Education and Science Research Program for Young and Middle-aged Teacher of Fujian Province of China (JA13012), Promotion Program for Young and Middle-aged Teacher in Science and Technology Research of Huaqiao University (ZQN-PY115), Program for Science & Technology Innovation Teams and Leading Talents of Huaqiao University (2014KJTD13), Research Program for Outstanding Young Teachers in Higher Education Institutions of Fujian Province of China under grant no. MJK20 and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (14BS210).
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Liu, J., Tian, H., Lu, J. et al. Neighbor-index-division steganography based on QIM method for G.723.1 speech streams. J Ambient Intell Human Comput 7, 139–147 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-015-0315-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-015-0315-6