Optical watermarking based on single-shot-ptychography encoding.

A novel optical encoding method based on single-shot ptychography is proposed for the application of optical watermarking. For the inherent properties of single-shot ptychography, the watermark is encoded into a series of tiny diffraction spots just in one exposure. Those tiny spots have high imperceptibility and compressibility, which are quite suitable for the optical watermarking application. The security of the proposed watermarking is mainly supported by the strong imperceptibility, as well as the introduction of compression encoding and scrambling encoding. In addition, the diversity of the multi-pinhole array and the structural parameters can also be served as security keys. Both numerical simulation and optical experiment demonstrate the high security and the easy implementation of the single-shot-ptychography-based optical watermarking. Further, the compression encoding can largely improve the embedding capacity that enables the multiple-watermarking for more transmitted information and higher security.