Robust audio watermarking method based on U-Net and discrete wavelet transform
Online published: 2025-08-20
Copyright
In recent years, the rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence has significantly accelerated the generation and dissemination of digital content. Among these developments, highly realistic deepfake audio poses substantial challenges for identifying authentic media content. Audio watermarking can effectively enhance the traceability of deepfake audio, preserving the authenticity and integrity of digital content. However, existing audio watermarking methods primarily rely on traditional techniques, which struggle to maintain robustness in complex environments. Addressing the need for robust audio watermarking, this study proposes a method based on U-Net and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). This approach leverages U-Net’s advantages in multi-scale feature extraction and skip connections, as well as the stability of DWT in frequency component decomposition and low-frequency features. The embedding and extraction of watermark information are achieved through jointly trained embedding and extraction networks. In the embedding network, U-Net embeds watermark information into low-frequency coefficients. In the extraction network, the decoder retrieves watermark information from these low-frequency coefficients. Additionally, a noise layer is introduced during iterative training to improve robustness further. Experimental results demonstrate that this method effectively embeds and extracts audio watermarks, achieving good robustness and imperceptibility.
WEN Shuangbing , ZHANG Qishan , TAN Hanzhong , HU Tao , LI Jun . Robust audio watermarking method based on U-Net and discrete wavelet transform[J]. Journal of Cybersecurity, 2025 , 3(3) : 91 -101 . DOI: 10.20172/j.issn.2097-3136.250307
表 1 本文方法与基准方法在FMA数据集上面对单一攻击的SNR与平均恢复位精度比较Table 1 Comparison of SNR and average bit recovery accuracy between the proposed method and the baseline method under single attacks on the FMA dataset |
| 攻击类型 | FDLM | FSVC | DeAR | UDAW (本文) |
| SNR | ||||
| AGWN15dB | ||||
| AGWN20dB | ||||
| AENca | ||||
| AENke | ||||
| AENla | ||||
| AENsi | ||||
| AENwa | ||||
| AENra | ||||
| AFD 0.5/L | ||||
| AFD 0.5/EX | ||||
| AFD 0.5/QS | ||||
| AFD 0.5/HS | ||||
| AFD 0.5/LG | ||||
| AEC 1K/0.5 | ||||
| AEC 2K/0.5 | ||||
| ATS 16k | ||||
| ATS 32k | ||||
| AVC 0.1 | ||||
| AVC 0.5 | ||||
| ARS | ||||
| AMF | ||||
| AER | ||||
| ABPF | ||||
| ALPF |
表 2 本文方法与基准方法在GTZAN和MagnaTagATune数据集上面对单一攻击的SNR与平均恢复位精度比较Table 2 Comparison of SNR and average bit recovery accuracy between the proposed method and baseline methods under single attacks on the GTZAN and MagnaTagATune datasets |
| 攻击类型 | GTZAN | MagnaTagATune | |||||||
| FDLM | FSVC | DeAR | UDAW (本文) | FDLM | FSVC | DeAR | UDAW (本文) | ||
| SNR | 34.167 7 | 28.817 8 | 22.451 6 | 26.667 0 | 35.575 8 | 36.142 5 | 25.142 7 | 28.635 0 | |
| AGWN15dB | 0.725 9 | 0.801 7 | 0.971 8 | 0.990 3 | 0.651 2 | 0.664 5 | 0.907 3 | 0.979 4 | |
| AGWN20dB | 0.749 2 | 0.844 2 | 0.991 4 | 0.997 1 | 0.680 2 | 0.700 1 | 0.954 4 | 0.992 9 | |
| AENca | 0.816 7 | 0.927 3 | 0.999 3 | 0.999 9 | 0.762 8 | 0.808 3 | 0.999 3 | 1.000 0 | |
| AENke | 0.810 9 | 0.820 3 | 1.000 0 | 0.998 4 | 0.766 1 | 0.735 8 | 1.000 0 | 0.996 7 | |
| AENla | 0.789 8 | 0.970 9 | 1.000 0 | 0.999 9 | 0.727 0 | 0.905 6 | 1.000 0 | 1.000 0 | |
| AENsi | 0.798 5 | 0.965 0 | 0.994 6 | 0.999 4 | 0.753 8 | 0.902 3 | 0.966 8 | 0.998 4 | |
| AENwa | 0.848 3 | 0.868 2 | 0.999 9 | 0.999 9 | 0.795 4 | 0.766 4 | 0.999 9 | 1.000 0 | |
| AENra | 0.825 5 | 0.825 9 | 0.999 9 | 0.999 9 | 0.778 9 | 0.688 5 | 0.999 9 | 1.000 0 | |
| AFD 0.5/L | 0.712 5 | 0.998 3 | 0.963 6 | 0.999 9 | 0.726 5 | 0.999 8 | 0.985 7 | 1.000 0 | |
| AFD 0.5/EX | 0.696 4 | 0.998 1 | 0.884 1 | 0.999 9 | 0.710 2 | 0.999 7 | 0.897 4 | 1.000 0 | |
| AFD 0.5/QS | 0.729 1 | 0.998 9 | 0.993 0 | 0.999 9 | 0.741 1 | 0.999 5 | 0.998 0 | 1.000 0 | |
| AFD 0.5/HS | 0.702 0 | 0.990 8 | 0.860 6 | 0.996 1 | 0.714 2 | 0.999 3 | 0.860 2 | 0.997 3 | |
| AFD 0.5/LG | 0.749 5 | 0.999 0 | 0.999 9 | 0.999 9 | 0.757 5 | 0.999 4 | 0.999 9 | 1.000 0 | |
| AEC 1K/0.5 | 0.999 2 | 0.999 6 | 0.999 9 | 0.999 9 | 0.999 3 | 0.999 7 | 0.999 9 | 1.000 0 | |
| AEC 2K/0.5 | 0.999 2 | 0.999 4 | 0.999 9 | 0.999 9 | 0.999 3 | 0.999 3 | 0.999 9 | 1.000 0 | |
| ATS 16k | 0.798 2 | 0.526 7 | 0.999 5 | 0.497 5 | 0.788 8 | 0.494 8 | 0.999 4 | 0.502 4 | |
| ATS 32k | 0.789 3 | 0.520 3 | 0.421 3 | 0.494 8 | 0.784 3 | 0.501 8 | 0.420 3 | 0.488 5 | |
| AVC 0.1 | 0.999 2 | 0.999 8 | 0.999 8 | 0.999 9 | 0.999 3 | 0.999 7 | 0.999 9 | 1.000 0 | |
| AVC 0.5 | 0.999 2 | 0.999 5 | 0.999 9 | 0.999 9 | 0.999 3 | 0.999 3 | 0.999 9 | 1.000 0 | |
| ARS | 0.997 6 | 0.999 5 | 0.999 9 | 0.999 9 | 0.584 7 | 0.480 7 | 0.999 9 | 1.000 0 | |
| AMF | 0.901 3 | 0.999 3 | 0.999 9 | 0.999 9 | 0.906 7 | 0.998 2 | 0.999 9 | 1.000 0 | |
| AER | 0.974 2 | 0.979 3 | 0.981 4 | 0.973 0 | 0.979 2 | 0.983 8 | 0.989 4 | 0.973 0 | |
| ABPF | 0.988 1 | 0.999 7 | 0.999 5 | 0.955 2 | 0.987 7 | 0.997 9 | 0.999 8 | 0.882 7 | |
| ALPF | 0.999 5 | 0.999 4 | 0.999 7 | 0.995 0 | 0.999 4 | 0.999 6 | 0.999 9 | 0.971 9 | |
表 3 本文方法与基准方法面对5种组合攻击的平均恢复位精度比较Table 3 Comparison of average bit recovery accuracy between the proposed method and baseline methods against five types of combined attacks |
| 方法 | AGWN20dB+AFD 0.5/HS | AGWN20dB+AER | ABPF+AER | AGWN20dB+ABPF | AGWN20dB+ABPF+AER |
| UDAW(本文) | 0.964 2 | 0.989 8 | 0.905 3 | 0.986 0 | 0.960 7 |
| FDLM | 0.666 3 | 0.751 9 | 0.948 9 | 0.751 9 | 0.741 6 |
| FSVC | 0.755 1 | 0.803 1 | 0.951 1 | 0.806 2 | 0.773 7 |
| DeAR | 0.708 2 | 0.954 8 | 0.987 4 | 0.942 3 | 0.922 7 |
表 4 UDAW与DeAR面对组合攻击的平均恢复位精度比较Table 4 Comparison of average bit recovery accuracy between UDAW and DeAR against combined attacks |
| 方法 | AGWN20dB | AFD 0.5/HS | AEC2K/0.5 | ABPF | AER | |||||||||
| UDAW(本文) | DeAR | UDAW(本文) | DeAR | UDAW(本文) | DeAR | UDAW(本文) | DeAR | UDAW(本文) | DeAR | |||||
| AGWN20dB | 0.989 6 | 0.953 4 | 0.989 5 | 0.776 3 | 0.994 5 | 0.955 4 | 0.995 1 | 0.959 4 | 0.980 2 | 0.920 5 | ||||
| AFD 0.5/HS | 0.991 3 | 0.769 2 | 0.999 2 | 0.975 4 | 0.998 8 | 0.911 1 | 0.990 1 | 0.882 9 | 0.984 6 | 0.897 4 | ||||
| AEC 2K/0.5 | 0.994 8 | 0.949 6 | 0.997 6 | 0.912 8 | 1.000 0 | 1.000 0 | 0.999 9 | 0.999 0 | 0.985 8 | 0.990 0 | ||||
| ABPF | 0.995 0 | 0.955 5 | 0.998 4 | 0.884 7 | 1.000 0 | 0.999 0 | 0.929 5 | 0.998 0 | 0.989 8 | 0.981 4 | ||||
| AER | 0.982 6 | 0.931 7 | 0.988 7 | 0.896 7 | 0.994 0 | 0.986 9 | 0.982 5 | 0.984 4 | 0.969 0 | 0.982 0 | ||||
表 5 本文方法与不同网络结构的SNR与平均恢复位精度比较Table 5 Comparison of SNR and average bit recovery accuracy of the proposed method with different network architectures |
| 方法 | CNN | ResNet | UDAW |
| SNR | 26.673 7 | 28.209 7 | 30.087 3 |
| AGWN20dB | 0.963 0 | 0.935 2 | 0.991 1 |
| AFD 0.5/ EX | 0.884 2 | 0.938 7 | 0.999 9 |
| AGWN+ABPF | 0.955 9 | 0.926 1 | 0.986 8 |
| AFD+AER | 0.870 3 | 0.926 2 | 0.975 6 |
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