Pitch and duration modification for speech watermarking

Abstract

We propose a speech watermarking algorithm based on the modification of the pitch (fundamental frequency) and duration of the quasi-periodic speech segments. Natural variability of these speech features allows watermarking modifications to be imperceptible to the human observer. On the other hand, significance of these features makes the system robust to common signal processing operations and low data-rate source excitation based speech coders. This class of coders is particularly obstructive for conventional audio watermarking algorithms when applied to speech signals. A pitch synchronous overlap and add (PSOLA) algorithm is used for pitch and duration modifications in the watermark embedding phase. Experiments with multiple speech codecs show very good robustness with low data-rate (5-8 kbps) speech coders.