On Achievable Error Exponents for Watermarking

Pierre Moulin and Ying~Wang

Probability-of-error exponents have recently been derived for watermarking
systems based on spread-spectrum and quantization-index modulation methods.
This paper takes this work one step further and presents minmax error
exponents for any embedding scheme and any attack (subject to distortion
constraints) at all rates below capacity. The decoders used are universal:
they do not know the attack used. Randomized codes outperform
deterministic codes, except in the case of memoryless attacks
where the same performance is obtained using either kind of code.