VLSI Implementation and Software Co-Simulation of Digital Image Watermarking with Increased Security

Background: Security is one of the fundamental and essential factors, which has to be addressed in the field of communication. Communication refers to the exchange of useful information between two or more nodes. Sometimes it is required to exchange some of the confidential information such as a company's logo, which needs to be hidden from the third person. The data that is being exchanged between these nodes has to be kept confidential and secured from unintended users. The three fundamental components of security are confidentiality, integrity and authentication. The data that is being exchanged has to be confidential, and only the authorized party should have access to the information that is being exchanged. One of the key methods for securing the data is encryption. Objective: The main objective of this paper was to address the problem of data hiding and security in communication systems. There is a need for having hardware resources for having high speed data security and protection. Methods: In this paper, we implemented image watermarking using LSB technique to hide a secret image, and employed encryption using Advanced Encryption Standard, to enhance the security of the image. An image is a two dimensional signal, with each pixel value representing the intensity level. The secure transmission of the image along the channel is a challenging task, because of the reason that, any individual can access it, if no security measures are taken. Results: In this paper, hardware realization of image watermarking/encryption and dewatermarking/ decryption is implemented using Very Large Scale Integration. The design is verified by means of co-simulation using MATLAB and Xilinx. The paper also presents the performance parameters of the design, with respect to speed, area and power. Conclusion: An efficient method of digital watermarking has been implemented with increased security and performance parameters are presented.