Audio Steganography and Comparison of Methods

Steganography is the science of hiding information within cover objects in order to transfer data securely. Besides, steganography methods are used to watermark digital files such as images, audios and videos for copyright protection. Audio steganography is one of the most challenging subjects since Human Auditory System (HAS) is more sensitive than Human Visual System (HVS). Therefore, there are fewer publications for audio steganography comparing to images, moreover qualified publications include complex algorithms. In this study, commonly used existing audio steganography methods with their comparisons have been explained briefly with its mathematics and basics of digital signal processing. The main goal was to design and publish an open source library with basic methods. MATLAB was chosen as programming platform for the library design considering it is commonly used for scientific researches. In this study, we have focused on Spread Spectrum, Echo Hiding and LSB Coding. Studied methods have been discussed in a triangle of robustness, capacity and imperceptibility. Robustness against compression has been compared and a couple of performance improvements for Spread Spectrum technique have been proposed as a result.